Is it possible to use these Pixie LEDs with FastLED?

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Is it possible to use these Pixie LEDs with FastLED? What type of LED do I put in the FastLED.addLeds<> call?

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they seem to use a different protocol : Originally, they have designed the Pixie to support the same serial protocol as the WS28x family. However, this compatibility, which was originally considered a feature has been eventually deemed a drawback.

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Yes, the Pixies use a different protocol. A very simple serial one at 115200 bps though. I think anyone with a decent familiarity with FastLED architecture could create a Pixie CLEDController (maybe cribbing from the DMX controller already in FastLED)

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If you just want the color control that FastLED offers, then you can use it to manipulate RGB values before sending them serially, but it doesn’t use a standard (for FastLED) protocol to communicate.

So… what everyone is saying.

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@Jarrod_Wagner oh yeah that’s a great idea. Instead of doing “FastLED.show()” grab the “Adafruit_Pixie::show()” function and slightly adapt it.

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It’s a shame they’re not using SPI - since they’re using serial I’ll need to do up new controllers for all the platforms to use the UARTs - the irony is they could’ve gotten much higher data rates if they used SPI - I may just say screw it and use the arduino serial libraries under the hood to push out the data. I don’t have any of these yet to play/test with though.

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@Tod_Kurt ​ and if you’re clever about the way you set things up (and the structure of pixies data) you may even be able to use the memory functions of FastLED to do things pretty efficiently.

It is a shame that they did it that way although understandable on the whole. Maybe we should push for a Pixie V1.1 :slight_smile:

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Would it be easier to modify the firmware of the pixel instead of modifying fastled?

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@Daniel_Garcia I have a couple extra. What if I sent one over or dropped it by? :slight_smile:

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That would certainly speed up getting it working :slight_smile: Drop me an email! (danielgarcia at the gmails)

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I have 8 of these - was there any progress on this? @Erin_St_Blaine or @Daniel_Garcia

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Yeah @Daniel_Garcia got it working.

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Thanks - in ordinary FastLED? What’s the CHIPSET declaration? These are B R I G H T !!! I made the mistake of looking at it face on when running the Adafruit demo. I couldn’t see for a few minutes! :slight_smile: I also wish I could solder better…

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PIXIE and you have to include SoftwareSerial.h before you include FastLED.h

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@Mark_Ortiz I Felt that way too. These things are hard to solder!