ATTiny85 + SoftwareSerial + WS2812 (neopixels) ? Does this work?

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ATTiny85 + SoftwareSerial + WS2812 (neopixels) ?

Does this work? I want to make christmas tree ornaments with bluetooth control. Is there a combination of a WS2812 library and serial communication that is compatible with the ATTiny85 ? I have trouble interpreting the libraries, more of a user than a developer.

Thanks!

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I don’t know why it wouldn’t work. How many LEDs will you be driving with each ATTiny85? What bluetooth module did you have in mind? It’s a little more expensive than an ATTiny85 + HC05, but I think the Beetle BLE has been used quite a bit around here: https://dfrobot.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1259

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Possible, but complicated. The problem with the 85 is it’s slow with just a little resource. It’ll depend on how fast the animations need to be, and how many lights you want to use. I’ve been using the Gemma to do some lights, but I find it gets slow past 10 or 20 lights if you want to do smooth and clean transitions/animations. Plus, you’ll need to account for reading from the serial input, which will be slow as well.

I like @Jason_Coon 's suggestion, which may solve some of those problems, and isn’t an 85, so you get some faster response times. Though I see it’s out of stock, which is too bad, I want one now.

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@Peter_Buelow Ah, sorry, didn’t notice that it was out of stock. Looks like it’s available on Amazon for a bit more $: https://www.amazon.com/Beetle-BLE-Smallest-Arduino-Bluetooth/dp/B014KQHEH6

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What about going WiFi and running it all off a ESP8266. Those are like $5 and could possibly do it all in one package

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I use a nano, an HC06 and the pfod application to control 60 LEDs on my car. It seems to work really well.

The mobile phone side of things is usually different depending on whether you use android or apple or even something else…

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Thanks! I would like to run about 20 from a Gemma but the animations don’t have to be super fast, maybe update at 30Hz? I was thinking to use ATTINY85 at 16MHz. I only used Dotstars before. I was thinking to use a pre-made app like Blynk through bluetooth. I haven’t used wifi before with Arduino, just an HC-05 with simple alpha-numeric serial commands from an Android serial terminal app. I have some esp8266-01s on order. Is wifi any more complicated than bluetooth for the user?

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@Stephen_Kramer you’ll need a rest server to bounce the messages through. Adafruit has s free one that is demoed on the ESP how tos. The advantage is you can use a webpage and access it across platforms.

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Can’t esp8266 just go through your router? I don’t need a webpage, just an app to send occasional commands to the board.

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@Stephen_Kramer yes, actually it can host it’s own page even.