I thought the Waveshare RP2040-Touch-LCD-1.28 would be ideal as the centre of an advent calendar project. Plus it's Christmas so lots of WS2812B LEDs too.

My repo containing the project can be found here: https://github.com/jondurrant/RP2040TouchAdvent

The concept is to slowly light three Christmas trees over the 24 days of December up to Christmas. Then keep lighting then with fairly light patterns through the 12 days of Christmas. At the same time display a different Christmas image on the Touch Screen, and allow the previous images to be scrolled through using the touch screen. Along with setting the current date. The data and time are held in a ChronoDot V2 (DS3231), so you can turn off each night without losing the date.

I used some surplus WS2812B LEDs form a 144 LED per meter strip to light some acrylic Christmas trees that I adapted from some cheap decorations (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08N6R76Q1?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title). 11 LEDs per Chrismas tree. I simply soldered the LED strips to a bit of prototype board and 4 pin header (Out, 5V, In, Gnd). I stuck the LED strip into the Christmas Trees using hot melt glue.

To drive the LEDs at full 5V I've used a 2 channel logic level shifter.

Finally there is a couple of LEDs and a switch which just put the unit into demo mode, so you don't have to wait to Christmas. Then it goes through the sequence with a day every 20 seconds.

The PCB is designed in KICad and the Case in Blender.

Video tutorials on the project design and the PCB design and 3D printed case are available.