I’m currently looking at using FastLED to control some WS2812B 60leds per metre strips. I essentially want to be able to control the leds through madmapper or similar software program so that i can alter the leds in realtime whilst synching up to my ableton dj set.
I want to start fairly small but still ambitious and use about 5 - 10 strips of 1metre LEDS positioned behind the dj booth. picture attached for clarification.
Ive filled by head over the last few days with tonnes of research. And have graduated from originally going to go with standard leds and seperate dimmer/controllers into a dmx to usb adapter to thinking about WS2811s with an arduino UNO or MEGA and ethernet shield to create an artnet node, to now looking at the possibilty of using a teensy 3.1 and OctoWS2811 to also create an artnet node.
So a bit of help if possible in a few areas:
If i want to use madmapper to send out dmx over artnet to control the LED strips. What is the maximum number of LEDS arduino uno or an arduino mega control at a decent frame rate?
Based on the last answer should i just go straight for a teensy 3.1 setup?
Any other practical advice you can give?
i’m new to all this but have a large capacity to learn
Many many thanks for all your help in advance
At 60hz you can run ~500 LEDs on one pin, but it leaves almost no room for cpu time on your controller for other things.
I’d definitely go with the Teensy 3.1 and the Octo WS2811 Adapter. You’ll also want your power supply/ground to tap into each strip – otherwise your colors will be off by ~2 meters in.
Yeah, unless you already got that UNO or MEGA on hand and don’t want to spend the $30, definitely go for the Teensy3.1 with OCTO shield. You will get 8X the FPS due to parallel output (or 8X LEDs at the same FPS rate) with a bonus that Teensy uses DMA output and that leaves CPU available for more interesting tasks.
And actually, an important question is - where do you want to run the pattern generation code? If you’re going to be running it on the laptop, then a Fadecandy interface is a far better choice for you - same hardware core as a teensy 3.1 and octows2811 adapter, but with firmware that’s optimized for running 8 strips of 60ish WS2812 leds alongside pulling data from a computer at high speed.
Hey Daniel G., I made something similar for my friend’s band using WS2812b strips connected to a SanDevices E682 controller (http://www.sandevices.com/E681info.html). I use lightjams to control the lights (http://www.lightjams.com/) - it is a really cool piece of software. If you don’t have a midi controller, just use some virtual midi software (e.g. http://tanageraudioworks.com/chirp.php) to use your laptop keyboard as a midi controller.
I know it’s not FastLED based, but thought it wouldn’t hurt. I’ll post a video when I get my hands on my girlfriend’s phone.
The best part about it is that the whole setup is that it is wireless, so you can walk around the venue with your laptop or tablet.
Also, FYI, if you don’t want to use aluminum channels for the led strips, you can go to local hardware store (I got mine at Lowes) and get some screen door base strip like this (http://www.lowes.com/pd_21532-958-BASE18___?productId=3024709&pl=1&Ntt=screen+door+channel). The base strips are light and durable, and the led strips fit perfectly into the channel.
I highly suggest checkout out this thread I started sometime ago, towards the end of page 4 I have a post where I’ve uploaded some barebones working files as well as convenient library downloads - everything you need to get moving with a slightly different workflow:
If you need to use mad mapper for a specific reason, you may have to do some work to adapt it into that workflow, otherwise if you’re flexible touch designer is extremely powerful and you can map any arbitrary shape / layout of led’s . Also TD is pc only which can be limiting if you’re on mac.
Worst case you can use Touch designer as a relay between mad mapper and your led’s
The other thing to mention is it uses serial over usb to push data to the teensy, but as noted in that thread with the wonderful fastLED combined with the octows2811 library a teensy can dumbly drive 3,680 led’s(at 60 fps) and touch designer can push several teensys at 60 fps (not sure on the upper limit yet)
I know art-net and dmx are industry lighting standards but for custom digital led’s (especially when you start surpassing a couple universes) I don’t think it’s the right choice.
