I love this project. Keep up the good work, it's great inspiration.

Are you planning on using the Raspberry Pi to do the audio? I've been looking at OPP with the new STM32 and have been wondering what the best way to do audio with it would be...

edit: I read some more and of course the raspberry pi does audio! Silly me

RE: Logic Level Shifting and neopixels

I've had good luck using this little modulein the past, but am unsure whether it will work for something quite as time sensitive as driving neopixels...

Looking at the schematic, it looks like the magic is just an npn mosfet switch whose gate is driven by the 3.3v logic. It should be okay to incorporate one into a neopixel "wing".

For timing, I see mixed responses on sparkfun's comments. Some say it works with adressable LED's, some not, some say SPI is no-go... looking at the fet's datasheet, max turn-on delay + max rise-time = 23ns, okay...

according to adafruit's guide here, the data line frequency is fixed at 800kHz.. Math time...

eh, I'm at the coffeeshop with awful wifi so I'm having trouble citing my sources, but I don't see any reason why using such a logic level shifter *shouldn't* work (or why it didn't work for other users...). I'll dig around tonight and see if I can find the parts to put together an experiment. I've been meaning to tinker more with my blue pills anyhow.

@borgdog I think calling them neopixels is no big deal. Adafruit's designs are mostly open-source anyway and if/when they rebrand something, they usually have great documentation and libraries to back it up. I'm happy to pay Adafruit for my first thing or two, use their documentation to learn how to use it, then go for the cheaper route once I have a little experience with it. I consider it a well-earned finder's fee. As a bonus, it's harder to accidentally order a ws2811 or a ws2801 by accident!

It's also just a manner of speaking. I'm sure you've used a Kleenex, or a Band-Aide, or a Crescent Wrench before...