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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

#51

Post by anfractuosity »

tlrobinson wrote: post #48
anfractuosity wrote: post #46

This looks a very interesting project! One thing I couldn't tell though, could you 'stream' LED pixel values over wifi instead of generating them on the hardware? Using the ws2812b Lights and the: https://github.com/jgarff/rpi_ws281x library, I made my LEDs pulse out an ID, which I read with a webcam, then used it to make a simple webapp, to 'paint' my Christmas tree's lights. https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/p…

You can send it patterns in the form of code, but the hardware generates them, so I don't think you need to use WiFi once you've uploaded them.

Gotcha cheers, I guess I was thinking about patterns which may be too big to fit in the ESP's memory.

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

#52

Post by simap »

anfractuosity wrote: post #51
tlrobinson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can send it patterns in the form of code, but the hardware generates them, so I don't think you need to use WiFi once you've uploaded them.

Gotcha cheers, I guess I was thinking about patterns which may be too big to fit in the ESP's memory.

Yep, the trick here is that Pixelblaze doesn't store or stream pixel data, the patterns are small fast programs that generate pixel data on the fly.

One benefit of this approach is that Wifi can drop or be unreliable without impacting animations.

This also lets them react to inputs e.g. using some of the IO or ADC, or using the sensor expansion board for audio, light, or movement (accelerometer). Each pattern is typically 5-15K (this includes compressed source, compiled, and preview animation), and there's plenty of flash to store hundreds of different patterns.

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

#53

Post by snops »

th0br0 wrote: post #36

There's the ElectroDragon ESP LED Board, which does pretty much all of what the Pixelblaze does (sans FW) for much less - although the footprint is larger... https://www.electrodragon.com/product/esp-led-strip-board/

The electrodragon board is for cheaper single colour strips (hence the large MOSFETs on the PCB) while this is for individually addressable LEDs.

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

#54

Post by Nursie »

xtf wrote: post #13
Cynddl wrote: 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

Oh god, I think I'm in love with a lighting setup...

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

#55

Post by solarkraft »

solarkraft wrote: post #50

This is great. I have been planning to install some LED strips for a while now, but software has been holding me back. This submission comes in just as some others are planning to order strips in bulk. Thanks!

Welp, never mind, I don't see where I can download it.

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

#56

Post by solarkraft »

bshep wrote: post #37

A couple of other controllers: - Falcon PiHat - connect to a Pi and is able to manage 2 string of ~800 LEDs each - EsPixelStick uses an ESP to run pixels - Can be bought on Amazon both use a standard Ethernet protocol for sending pixel data. I use xlights to control them but there are various controllers out there. https://www.pixelcontroller.com/store/index.php

Thanks!

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

#57

Post by solarkraft »

mhroth wrote: post #9

I've spent the last four years learning the art and craft of LED art. I suppose I wouldn't change the way that I do things, but if I were starting out again I'd definitely use this. I can very much appreciate all of the work that this system takes off of my hands. The auto-recompile low-iteration-time is key. Very impressive!

How do you do things?

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

#58

Post by solarkraft »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #25

If you want an interesting side project: spin a string of these addressable LEDs to make a circular display, or sweep a plane of them for a display volume.

persistence of vision?

yes.

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

#59

Post by solarkraft »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
StavrosK wrote: post #2

Great project! The hardware looks pretty simple, but the software side looks like a lot of work was put in, and it shows. Fantastic job.

Oh, I just noticed it's closed source. Too bad :/

Followed the same path as you. Of course the hardware is ridiculously expensive, as it happens when you spin your own stuff (needlessly).

Will have look into rendering the patterns & streaming over sACN (a DMX-derived, seemingly standard protocol mentioned in another comment).

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

#60

Post by lozaning »

shriram2 wrote: post #16

Ws28xx LEDs based projects are worth doing . Here is one of my project Alexa + Ws2812b https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTAEfD8b7A Audio Reactive lights - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LXyipKAUpEs

Wow this is awesome! Can you share more about how you've set this up? I'd love to read a write up if you've got one.

I've got something similar going on right now with my phillips hue strips and their new realtime api, but every strip is all the same color.

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