Getting Started with Microsoft Expressive Pixels (2 of 9)

Key Takeaways

[Music] hi there welcome to the expressive pixels community i'm stacy and today i'm going to help you get started so you can begin to express connect and share with expressive pixels first there are a few things we need to do number one make sure you're running windows 10 operating system with the may 2019 update or higher you can check that in your system settings next in order to bring your animations to life you may want a device in addition to your pc to show your animations on like the sparklet i have here you can connect these to your pc with either a usb connection or wireless bluetooth connection there are many available led displays you can get from third-party such as adafruit sparkfun and silicon squared or you can even create your own led display and now we'll want to download the app let's go into the microsoft store and in the search bar at the top we'll search for expressive pixels okay there it is select that and this is where it will have you download the app and install it we can see that mine is already installed so let's go ahead and launch and our expressive pixels app will open up great now with the app open and an led device ready to go we can get started i'm going to walk you through the interface and show you how to connect your device so you can begin creating your own expressions from there you can check out our other tutorials for more detailed instructions you'll notice when you open the app there are quite a few samples already installed and if i hover over them i can see how they will animate when shown on a device let's take a look at our menu bar i'll select the menu icon at the top left to expand our menu descriptions first we have devices this is where you will connect your device if you hover over the device you will see a button that says connect you'll notice it's also giving me the option to connect by bluetooth now if you have more than one device here this is where you can choose which one to display your animations on and you can also name each of your devices so you'll know which is which i'm calling this one mysparklet now you'll want to be sure to be connected if you want your animations to show up on your device and you'll need to reconnect each time you open expressive pixels once connected you'll see some of the settings preferences that can be adjusted like specifying how you want to preview your animations on your device and setting the brightness level as well as easily updating the firmware if you've been notified there's an update we will cover more on the device in a later tutorial next we have our cloud account here you'll want to sign in to a personal microsoft account in order to share your animations this would be a personal email address that you would use for public microsoft services such as skype xbox and the microsoft store you'll type in your display name here and you can choose any name that you want associated with your animations and save your name next we have three types of animation galleries first one is my animations and this is where all of your own animations will be stored as well as the installed sample animations next is our community gallery where you'll find animations shared from others in the community and where you can share yours you'll need to connect to your personal online account in order to share your own animations and the third gallery is our device animations and these are the ones stored on your connected led device and the last item is the developer console for all of our developers and maker community you can find more information on this in our other tutorials when ready to begin make sure you're in the my animation screen and you'll want to select new animation from the top right over here okay now you're ready to make your own masterpiece watch the creating images tutorial to help jump start the process be sure to check out the other tutorial videos for more detailed instructions on creating editing and managing your animations and sharing them with others and for our developers and maker community you can find instructions on how to create your own display device thanks for watching try the app and let us know what you think visit us at aka dot ms whack expressive pixels to find out more [Music] you