Exploring Different Number Bases With a Hexadecimal Display

What the FFFFFF?

My Hexadecimal display is a Raspberry Pi Pico W project which uses Neopixel RGB LEDs and Micropython to show what actually happens when you count.

Purpose and design choices

There were three main aims for this project:

• Build a display using addressable LEDs (NeoPixels) to demonstrate what happens when counting in different number bases.
• Bring 6-digit hexadecimal colour codes to life so the colour for a given hex code is bounced off the wall.
• Use a Raspberry Pi Pico W to host a small web server that would control the display and allow for user supplied data to affect what is displayed.

Alternatives to ten

We live in a decimal world where we count and represent numbers with the digits 0 to 9. We understand the digits to mean different things depending on where they are placed. So in the number 1849 we know that the digit 1 means 1000, the 8 means 800, the 4 means 40 and the 9 means 9 ones. As soon as we count to 9 in any place we’ve run out of room and need the next column. This is called base 10 as there are 10…