Finally getting around to that grid project…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6quPuQXyDg8
Very nice! What’s the scale of this thing?
was going to go 42"x42" but started putting it together and that is huge… will work great with the 7 band filter though… 7 all over…
So is this 42" x 21" then?
its interesting because its my 1-d patterns on a 2-d surface…
Switching LED topology (e.g. 1D to 2D, etc) but keeping the software the same often results it totally different looks. I have a pattern which, on a wreath (2-D, circle) with an LED strip in it looks like a ‘swirl’, but which on a (jumbled) handful of pixels-on-a-string looks like ‘a flock of psychedelic fireflies.’
Thanks for sharing this - please share more as you evolve the code, too!
Well this is all TToQE code… http://www.facebook.com/ttoqe… just building on it all…
Aaaahhh! Cool!
When you program the lights are you using predetermined array patterns or controlling the LEDs with loops and variables?
I see some beautiful light and color transitions but I’m having trouble coding them myself.
All of my patterns are algorithmic.
I have spent a lot of time on patterns… what exactly are you having trouble with? Color? If its color, I think my best advice is to use a HSVtoRGB function and then you can choose a hue(H) value 0-256… I just use a byte and add to it to transition color. I also use this function for light brightness by modifying the brightness (V) value 0-256. However, the brightness can be tricky because of gamma correction so it takes some playing with… I have found that I use exponential division (divide by 2) on the brightness and that does pretty good at a smoother transition for fading without taxing the processor too much…
I have trouble with programming color patterns that fade in and out over multiple LEDs in two and three dimensions. I’ve seen others do smooth color transitions, moving sprites, and so on and I cannot figure out how they were programed in an efficient and “elegant” manner. I’m pretty much a beginner hack at programming
I’ve learned to do rainbows, random colors, flame effects and such on the 60 light WS2812B RGB strip and the 8 LED RGB strips from ADAfruit on the Arduino platform.
I’m using the fastSPI library for color HSV color and the dimming/brighting library functions. I absolutely love the colors I can create.
Your key word of “algorithmic” was very helpful in finding more programming examples in Google. I know very little about this area of programming.
Building large static arrays of pattens to send to the LED seems very limited. Algorithmic programming looks very promising
I actually live very near Villareal’s Bucky Ball sculpture and that has inspired me to start a new hobby playing with blinky lights to make art! 
Thanks for your help.
This is an inherent problem with this type of work. It looks very elegant when its done right and the code behind it does not look all that complex. However, creating them is much more difficult than you might think… I have spent 10 minutes making a cool pattern and I have spent 4 hours making others.
I was inspired initially to build LED art by the Cubatron at Burning Man in 2006. My first LED project was The Tunnel of Questionable Enlightenment in 2011… Spent 800 hours on that project, probably half of those were spent cursing at MCUs and LEDs and pulling my hair out!
Good Luck!!!
ULine carton tubes? Nice way to recycle!