[HN Gopher] NeoPixel Christmas Tree Lights Controlled by a Raspb...
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       NeoPixel Christmas Tree Lights Controlled by a Raspberry Pi
        
       Author : KamaluddinKhan
       Score  : 47 points
       Date   : 2021-12-20 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (shopmakergenix.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (shopmakergenix.blogspot.com)
        
       | fred256 wrote:
       | Here's Matt Parker's video from last year:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlpIojusBE
       | 
       | And he ran a bunch of viewer-supplied programs on it:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7eHTNm1YtU
        
         | anfractuosity wrote:
         | I thought that video was interesting, but a shame he didn't
         | seem to go into how the 3D coords were obtained from what I
         | recall.
        
           | AceJohnny2 wrote:
           | He did explain how he got the 3D coords (in principle), 5
           | minutes in the original video.
        
       | miskin wrote:
       | I really like Twinkly lights. You can 3D map lights on the
       | christmas tree with your phone and then play with individually
       | controllable RGBW light points. They are relatively cheap, even
       | non-DIY people can buy and use them. It would be great if they
       | provided some official API, but if you want to hack them, there
       | are ways to do it: https://labs.f-secure.com/blog/twinkly-
       | twinkly-little-star/
        
       | garaetjjte wrote:
       | My attempt at RPi controlled lights:
       | https://milek7.pl/.stuff/26gru.webm
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | acous wrote:
         | Looks cool, Here's mine! :) https://www.splice.ie/hn-tree.mp4
         | 
         | Did you write the pattern yourself?
        
           | elliottkember wrote:
           | Here's one I did a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/wo
           | ahdude/comments/a5cu7n/my_christm...
        
             | Wiseacre wrote:
             | Are you selling kits? I would like information on buying
             | one.
        
           | garaetjjte wrote:
           | Yes, it runs simple program that uses rpi_ws281x + LuaJIT to
           | run lua scripts (haphazardly written in web editor) that
           | generate output data.
        
       | basseq wrote:
       | Lots of material out there on on using WS2811/2 LEDS for
       | Christmas lights. A Raspberry Pi is a little overkill; a ESP8266
       | / NodeMCU running WLED will do you just fine. Reddit's r/led is
       | filled with these projects, or check our DrZzs on YouTube who has
       | a ton of detailed guidance.
        
         | hanklazard wrote:
         | Agreed, ESP8266/ESP32 is totally sufficient. Maybe if you
         | wanted to run Xlights also off the same board it would make
         | sense? I wouldn't bother. Dr. Zzs is selling a couple of pre-
         | flashed boards that make the whole WLED set-up really easy (1).
         | 
         | 1. https://drzzs.com/shop/dig-uno-diy-rgb-led-controller-w-
         | wled...
        
         | anfractuosity wrote:
         | Doesn't it depend on how many simultaneous strips you want to
         | drive and the no. of leds, for large installations I think an
         | FPGA probably makes more sense?
        
           | qbasic_forever wrote:
           | The signal to drive these LEDs isn't super complex and any
           | simple MCU can bit bang generate it on a digital output. The
           | bigger limitation is usually memory if you're buffering all
           | the color values to animate them, and to a lesser extent raw
           | processing speed to do more and more complex animations and
           | math.
        
             | anfractuosity wrote:
             | Yeah the ws2811 signal is only around 800kHz or so from
             | what I recall, I was thinking to generate say 8+
             | simultaneous signals from a framebuffer would be more
             | difficult on an MCU than an FPGA, which can do that
             | trivially. But I think some strips like APA102 can be
             | driven at frequencies in the order of MHz using an SPI type
             | protocol (just saw someone claiming 35MHz on the wire)
        
         | ssl232 wrote:
         | On the other hand, if you were, like me, an early adopter of
         | the Raspberry Pi you probably find your old Pi 1 is too slow to
         | use for demanding applications these days. But doing a bit of
         | bit banging and software or hardware SPI to control a strip of
         | LEDs is well within a Pi 1's capability, and the Pi comes for
         | free if you have one gathering dust.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-20 23:01 UTC)