Hello,
I’m working on a Christmas lighting project.
I intend to use 1 x teensy 3.2 an octows2811 adapter and ws2811 strips to drive multiple outdoor christmas trees/path lighting etc.
All of my trees of varying size and number of leds will be able to do similar sequences like flash, rotate, scan up, scan down etc and I will trigger manually or to the beat of music.
Will there be any trouble running long lenghths (30m maybe) of data/gnd for ws2811 signal to each strip of leds.
From reading the fastled wiki I believe if I was to use the ws2811 controller I would have no problem putting different numbers of leds on up to 16 channels/outputs of led strips.
I want to use the fastled octows2811 controller with 8 channels so I can have the most cpu time for my lighting effects and audio beat detection, however I think this limits me to having to work with one large array rather than be able to make the logic a bit easier as described int he wiki for multiple controllers/strips.
A couple things… Distance will be an issue since TTL signals don’t do well in long runs. A work around is to use rs485 adapters to convert your signals so you can push them at lest 30m distance or more.
But the trick will be individually controlling and sequencing your lights and with music and the amount of code to do so. Not impossible but someone else would need to give you further direction.
Since you mentioned animating to music may I suggest another direction. One option is to use FPP (formerly falcon pie player) and connect it to the USB interface on the teensy to control your lights for light shows. You can use free software like vixen to create your music and light animations and save them to the player. The player does all the work and the teensy acts as a true pixel controller. You would still need to use rs485 extenders to push your pixel signals far unless you use multiple teensy’s and utilize e1.31 or multiple slave fpp . Everything I mentioned has been done and code is available to do so.
I’ll use rs485 adapters if I go the way of central teensy. Is suppose I need 16xadapters for my 8x ws2811 strips.
Your suggestion to use FPP has me thinking.
I currently have a test setup with 2 x teensy 3.2’s. 1 does audio analysis in real time using the tools provided by Paul’s audio library and passes the fft data to the second teensy over rs485.
The second teensy uses this fft data with some code of mine to do beat detection which is working pretty good. It then triggers various. Simple animations on my trees (tree at the moment on 1 channel/strip 216 ws2811)
After your suggestion I have had a quick look at youtube and am impressed with what I see.
I have searched and read some info on setting fpp for various controllers, but nothing yet about how or what I use to program my static(?) sequences.
So my picture of fpp so far is I have a rpi with an sdcard full of audio and lighting instructions and an rs485 adapter.
This rpi plays my music and sends the instructions over rs485 using some lighting protocol to 1 or more teensys that read this and update my lights.
How do I program lighting effects in this case and how difficult is it given my arrangement of ws2811 strips are not a strip or matrix but will be something like below.
Eg. prototype shown here doing a simple rms audio display:
There are couple ways you can talk to the teensy one is. Usb serial and the other is DMX over Ethernet. You can use other DMX serial method but keep in mind if you use more than 170 pixels your already beyond DMX 512 capabilities. This is where USB or Ethernet will be you better option.
The FPP needs a sequence file and there is a couple options to make those. Vixen or nutcracker xlights software will allow you to make these sequences and you will use the fpp web GUI to upload the file and music.