Is there a good source of libraries for digital LED effects?

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Is there a good source of libraries for digital LED effects?

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Well, there’s been a ton of code shared here, and the FastLED library itself has a few examples.

What do you have in mind?

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I am just learning… I got some LPD8806 strips - I thought they were WS2801 compatible but apparently not, so been looking for code and things to learn with. I have the FastLED library but the documentation for it leaves a bit to be desired initially - trying to find more beginner-type walk-thrus

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There are some pretty basic examples that come with the library. Did you get them going yet? I assume you looked at the documentation here:

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I’ve been reading it - been noticing some odd stuff… I followed the basic example - and just guessed what the proper setup was for LPD8806s - the tutorial doesn’t seem to reference where the master list of supported chipsets and their symbolic tokens are… but I got this to kinda work:

#include <FastLED.h>

#define NUM_LEDS 16
#define DATA_PIN 2
#define CLOCK_PIN 3

CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];

void setup() {

FastLED.addLeds<LPD8806, DATA_PIN,CLOCK_PIN>(leds, NUM_LEDS);

}

void loop() {
leds[0] = CRGB::Red;
leds[1] = CRGB::Green;
leds[2] = CRGB::Blue;
FastLED.show();
delay(30);
}

Obviously, it’s supposed to set the first led to red, second to green, third to blue… but instead i get blue, red green – backwards… is this a problem with the driver I’m using?

Is it possible that I have some defective LEDs that have the wiring wrong?

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ahh, I figured it out – there’s a calibration sketch I can run and I figured out where to reverse the LEDs in the definition - kinda convoluted as far as where to find out what information but I’m slowly figuring it out.

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Sounds like you’re well on your way!

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There’s a bunch of notes up on the wiki http://fastled.io/wiki the RGB calibration is described here https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/wiki/Rgb-calibration we’re spinning up doxygen based API docs here http://fastled.io/docs/3.1/modules.html though that level of documentation is going to assume some level of knowledge on the part of the developer.

There is a lot of documentation work I’d love to do - but I don’t have a lot of time right now to work on the library - and there are features/bugs/platforms that need to be worked on, and they usually get my first attention, time wise.

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As a complete novice, I learned everything I needed from the examples and from the awesome funkboxing sketch: http://funkboxing.com/wordpress/?p=1366

I’m still a coding novice, but have been able to put together some acceptable effects.

If I can do it, anyone can :wink:

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Thanks for the suggestions. I am using LPD8806s and have them working with FastLED - as many sample functions as I can play with is appreciated. I’m having trouble finding well-organized examples. I can help add documentation if I know where to look and what’s needed.

11

Is there a sketch that may demo all the built-in FastLED routines?

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I think the funkboxing example won’t work - I’m not using fastled_spi, just regular fastLed and I have data + clk pins.

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FastSPI_LED is the older name for FastLED – and the funkboxing code shows off a bunch of things (though, being old it doesn’t have a lot of the newer math/palette stuff that the library has). DemoReel100 has a bunch of example effects, though it also has yet to be updated with everything added over the past 6 months or so.

As far as demoing all the routines - FastLED is less of a library of effects routines, and more a library of building blocks (trig functions, interpolation functions, math functions, color mapping functions, etc…) for building your own effects. (There are some simple effect functions to show off things the library can do. Looking at the code for those in (colorutils.h/colorutils.cpp can probably be educational).

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(I renamed the library from FastSPI_LED to FastLED a couple years ago because the library does much more than SPI based LEDs these days :slight_smile: