 Hi, I'm Erin Swainblane for Adafruit, and for this week's project, I'm building a light-up umbrella stand. This is a Totoro-themed umbrella stand that knows if it's going to rain, and if it's going to in the next six hours, it lights up to remind you to bring your umbrella. Wi-Fi enabled umbrella stand that checks the weather for you and lights up if it's going to rain. Place it by the door and you'll always remember your umbrella. This tutorial uses a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a Neopixel strip. There's a full tutorial at learn.adafruit.com with code samples and everything you need to get started. We're using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a strip of skinny Neopixels. You can also pick up some clear heat shrink and silicone stranded wire from the Adafruit shop, as well as a USB cable to power your project. Finally, get some DEVCON silicone glue to glue the pixels to your umbrella stand. Step one, we're going to install our software. Plug your Raspberry Pi into your computer and a drive will appear called RP1-RP2. If it doesn't, try plugging it in while holding down the boot select button. Head to CircuitPython.org and download the latest version of the software. Drag the UF2 file you downloaded to the RP1-RP2 drive to install CircuitPython. If your install is successful, the drive name will change to CircuitPy. Click on this drive to take a look at the contents. One of the files at the root of the drive is called settings.toml. This is where we'll put in our personal credentials. Open this file with a text editor and enter your Wi-Fi network name and password at the top. Next, we'll need to add our Adafruit IO key. Head to io.adafruit.com and log in with your Adafruit name and password. Click on the yellow key to find your username and key and enter them into your settings file as shown. Save the file in the same location once you're done. Next, head back to the guide and download the code bundle. Find the version that matches your CircuitPython install. I'm using version 8. Copy code.py and the lib file to your CircuitPyDrive. To customize your code, open code.py in a Python editor. I'm using Moo. Enter your latitude and longitude at the top. You can also customize the light color and the number of pixels here in the code. Once you're happy, save the code to the root of your CircuitPyDrive as code.py and you're up and running. Once you've got your software up and running, it's time to assemble the electronics. Cut a red, black, and white wire to about four inches long. Strip the ends and twist them so they're tidy. Solder the red wire to Vbus, the black wire to ground, and the white wire to pin GP0. You can see a full pin-out diagram on the Adafruit website. Count out your pixels and cut your strip to length. My project uses 30 pixels. Trim the wires so they're even and strip a little bit of shielding off of each one. Before I solder, I like to strip the ends of the wires and tin them, and then trim them again so they're about a 16th of an inch long. Also, tin the pads on the Neopixel strip. This way, it makes it easy to connect the wires because you don't have to hold solder, since both pieces already have solder on them. Slide a clear piece of heat shrink over the pixels before you solder so that we can seal them up later. Solder the red wire to the plus pad, the white wire to data in, and the black wire to ground. Remember, these strips are directional, so be sure you're soldering to the in end. Check for little arrows on the strip to make sure that they're going in the direction of data flow. If you're new to soldering Neopixel strips, we have a beginner guide at learn.adafruit.com. I'll put a link in the description. Plug your Pico into power and wait a few seconds for the Wi-Fi to connect. The pixels will light up for just a moment to show that everything's working. If it's not, head over to the guide for some troubleshooting tips. Seal up the ends of your strip by squeezing a little hot glue inside your heat shrink, and then shrinking it down over your solder joints. This will encase your joints and glue and make a waterproof seal for your strip. Be sure to do both ends. Test your strip one more time. If everything's working, it's time to build the base. Now that you've got your pixels lighting up, let's build the umbrella base. For my umbrella stand, I'm using a large glass jar and the black plastic frame from a round mirror that I found at the thrift store. The base doesn't quite fit around the jar, but it's close enough that a little work with a dremel and a heat gun can make it fit. I also cut a slit for the USB cable using my dremel. I glued the Pico and the USB cable into place using hot glue. And for the pixels, I used DevCon silicone adhesive. Not very much will stick to these silicone sheaths, so this is the best kind of glue that I've found for this. I also ended up using the same DevCon glue to glue the base to the glass jar. It makes a nice sticky residue that will stick to just about anything. So I tried to stick the glass to the plastic. This stuff worked fantastic. I left a little strand of lights at the end that will fit inside my Totoro. Finally, I added a 3D printed Totoro figurine, slipping the end of the Neopixel strip inside to make them glow. And to finish it off, I added a vinyl sticker that I cut on my Cricut vinyl to bring the whole project together. See the full build tutorial at learn.adafruit.com and remember to subscribe for more fun project videos. Thanks for watching!