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Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

bhencke.com

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Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#12
post #10

Off topic but I like that his website puts the menu where your thumb on mobile can actually reach it

I wonder why on earth mobile phones usually have controls on top of the screen, but not on the bottom. Phone call app has search bar on top. Call activity tab on top. The default sort behavior, when searching, is to put more relevant results from top to bottom. Why not bottom to top?

This design decision is especially annoying on larger screen devices.

At least invoking keypad is lower-right corner.

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#13
post #6

How does this compare to FastLED [1] on the same ESP8266 (and ESP32) platform? FastLED is free and open source, and support almost all LED drivers out there. Writing animations with FastLED might not be as easy as with Pixelblaze, but similarly only requires a few lines of code. [1] https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED

This is a nice project made with FastLED:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQ8qC1KQgU

Next step: Warp Core

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#14
post #8

I'm working on several medium sized LED projects and am curious if anyone has a guide or links to buying WS2812 or similar strands. I've bought a ~10 of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZHB9M6A/ref=oh_aui_sear... but I would love to find a slightly cheaper source. Alibaba seems to sell them at half the cost but product titles, photos, and descriptions don't ever seem to match

Ebay is worth considering for these too.

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#15
> Pixelblaze was designed for APA102 LEDs (aka DotStar). These LEDs are state-of-the-art and provide rock solid updates, faster refresh cycles, and the possibility of a dynamic range well beyond 0-255

Are these still the state-of-the-art in their category?

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#17
Nice to see you on Hacker News Ben! This is Chris a.k.a. ChrisLights, I spoke to you about Sparkled on one of your videos a while back.

It's awesome to see you getting some recognition for your excellent work on Pixelblaze, keep it up!

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#18
post #8

I'm working on several medium sized LED projects and am curious if anyone has a guide or links to buying WS2812 or similar strands. I've bought a ~10 of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZHB9M6A/ref=oh_aui_sear... but I would love to find a slightly cheaper source. Alibaba seems to sell them at half the cost but product titles, photos, and descriptions don't ever seem to match

I've ordered here without any problems: https://btf-lighting.aliexpress.com/store/1051119

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#19
post #6

How does this compare to FastLED [1] on the same ESP8266 (and ESP32) platform? FastLED is free and open source, and support almost all LED drivers out there. Writing animations with FastLED might not be as easy as with Pixelblaze, but similarly only requires a few lines of code. [1] https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED

One is a hardware solution with a built in hosted software library, the other is pure software so I don't think you can really compare.

Re: Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

#20

Can you network multiple boards together to drive larger LED arrays in sync?

https://github.com/simap/Firestorm

It's new, I haven't had a chance to update website/videos. Syncs animation timebases and lets you push sticky commands to multiple Pixelblaze on a network.

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