Can timers be used to create custom LED animations?

self-answering in case this is useful to others: yes, you totally can - I wrote a function to blink the led once when you are turning an encoder "past" it's min or max (0, 127)

the difference between mine and the provided led animation function is that it will work with value 0 by using beautify to do "true off" zero only to give this warning, and then it goes back to "dim" zero

blink_count = 3 corresponds to one isolated blink, not just toggling on and off - starts on, 1. off, 2. on, 3. off, back on

Code for saw function:

function lvb(num, v, b)
    led_color(num, 2, R, G, B, b)
    led_value(num, 2, v * 2)
end
function saw(e, n, t, i_min, i_max)
    local num = e:element_index()
    if i_max < i_min then
        i_max = i_min
    end
    local range = i_max - i_min
    local period = t / n
    local timer = math.max(30, math.min(math.floor(period / range), 60))
    local steps = period / timer
    local cur = e.saw_step / (steps > 1 and (steps - 1) or 1)
    local i = math.floor(i_min + (range * cur) + 0.5)
    if e.saw_state == 0 then
        e.saw_step = 0
        lvb(num, i_max, 0)
    else
        if e.saw_step == 0 then
            lvb(num, i, 1)
        else
            lvb(num, i, 0)
            if e.saw_step >= steps then
                e.saw_step = -1
            end
        end
        e.saw_step = e.saw_step + 1
        timer_start(num, timer)
    end
end