Be careful adjusting the trimpots, they are quite delicate. They can be damaged if you use the wrong tool or too much force.

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but you can reset the configuration of the Star by holding pushbutton S3 at startup. Note that the LED patterns won't start until you release it.

Similarly, if the LDR's auto-configuration somehow becomes corrupted, you can hold S1 at start-up to reset just that. And holding S2 at start-up resets the auto-brightness controls to their defaults.

The article mentions that a long press of S3 during operation will disable auto brightness control. It actually toggles it, so you can restore it without having to reset the minimum brightness setting.
