Welp, I did up the board exactly like the fritzing diagram and it’s not lighting up anything and the board started getting extremely hot. I have to change the batteries in my multimeter for further investigation. What’s the worst that could happen if I skip the logic level converter @Jason_Coon ? The web app is working perfectly with just +, -, and data hooked up. I’m eager to get into the tree building
@Charity_Stolarz , sorry for all of the trouble. 
I’ll double check the Fritzing diagram tonight. If it works without the level shifter, definitely leave it out. I went a long time without using them, but they’re supposed to always help, and never hurt.
Please don’t apologize! I’m so grateful for all of your help and providing the awesome project in the first place! I’m going to try the level shifter out with the nodemcu boards I have that were giving me crazy timing- they don’t have the 5v pin only 3.3. Did you see my question about controlling multiple boards like clones of each other through 1 web app? Or do you know of any code examples that set up one board to send commands to multiple other esp8266 at the same time?
I haven’t done any work on trying to sync multiple boards. It shouldn’t be too difficult to modify the web app to send commands to multiple IP addresses. That wouldn’t precisely sync them, but would allow you set the pattern, brightness, power, etc. I think if you powered them all on simultaneously they should be pretty closely synched.
Hello Jason. I’m trying to build a tree with a simpler layout. Just a 4x50 ws2812b led strip going along the tree. I don’t understand how to change the hardcoded map.h to match my own layout. Let’s say I have 8 rows. 60+48+36+24+18+8+4+1=199 (I have 1 dead led at the end of the 4th strip). How to make the matrix? I’d like to have some animations (like meteor shower) going from the top to the bottom of the tree following the pol. coordonates (to go vertically instead of following the strip). My final goal is implementing the flaschen-taschen for ESP8266 client. Best regards,
Hey i have a quick question on this project. Ive always used my WS2812B’s on a 3.7V lipo battery and never had any issues with flickering or random resets. Is the level shifter really necessary?
@Jason_Coon and the gang! The saga continues… so I had everything working great- I decided to map it for my cypress outside with 500 pixels instead of 250. I set them up using the demo100 and then fixed the mapping (rather loosely). The problem now is that (I think) the global variables are now too big, tipping from 59% to 62%. Leaving heap only at 30k and it’s now resetting before connecting to the IP. It won’t even do autoplay. I tried to make it smaller by commenting out all of the IR stuff (since I’m not using it) and the radii mapping with inward outward patterns. But that only gets it down to 61%. As soon as I switch the mapping back to 250 it works fine. Any suggestions?
@Cristian_Martinez I got it to work without it- who knows if it’ll last though
@Charity_Stolarz i mean ive never had any problem running them at 3.7V but at 3.3 that may be different. Im gonna power them from 5V anyways straight from the power supply. Fingers crossed its a good steady power supply. I tried a cheap one once and it was crap. The whole strip was going crazy.
@Cristian_Martinez yeah I’m doing the same- powering the controller separately- actually when I hooked up my ws2812b strips they were freaking out and I got them to work well with the level shifter. But the 2811s (5v) were fine. Then I hooked up the ws2812 strip accidentally (just buried in piles of wires over here) with 2811 chipset listed in ide and they worked fine.
I’ve got it working with my 500 num_leds map if I delete the IR, apMode, noise, twinkleFOX and meteors. But I kinda want those patterns back… might try deleting the “simple” webpage. If anyone else has an idea of things I could cut to save memory I would appreciate the advice. I have no idea what I’m doing!
Lol i feel you there! Im a noob too. All ive got going for me are some custom PCBs with several circuits built around an Attiny85 but when it comes to software im still in my ABCs lol
Lol i feel you there! Im a noob too. All ive got going for me are some custom PCBs with several circuits built around an Attiny85 but when it comes to software im still in my ABCs lol
@Charity_Stolarz , that’s very strange. The meteors patterns are still very much a work in progress, and I was never very happy with the noise patterns on the tree, so definitely toss those. Tried just adding back in the TwinkleFOX patterns? You could also try commenting out the WebSockets, update server, and mDNS. Those aren’t absolutely required.
@Jason_Coon how good is the WEMOS D1 mini pro? Im fixing to buy a few. Is it a good product? Or is there a better one that you recommend?
@Cristian_Martinez I’ve been very happy with them, the best ESP8266 board I’ve found. I’ve bought several of them.
Ok im gonna give them a try. Hopefully i dont burn one of them out like i did the NodeMCU lol
Many thanks to @Chris_Creel for noticing some errors on the Tree v2 page, which I’ve now fixed: https://www.evilgeniuslabs.org/tree-v2.html I linked to the wrong capacitor, and there were a bunch of connections to 5V instead of ground in the Fritzing diagram. Sorry if that caused any issues for you @Charity_Stolarz , or anyone else.
Its all good brother!
Im still waiting on my boards lol