So I have 6 LED strips of various lengths attached to the  the Feather

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So I have 6 LED strips of various lengths attached to the the Feather Bluefruit controller on 6 different PINS. I saw the Multiple Controller example, which helped me understand using arrays to control the various strips but this always assumed the length of LED’s was constant - mine are not. I basically want to use functions like “rainbow” and such, send it to each of the strips and have it display properly according to the number of LEDs in the strip. I’m trying to avoid something like this:

FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 6>(strip1, 11);
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 9>(strip2, 13);
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 10>(strip3, 17);
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 11>(strip4, 20);
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 12>(strip5, 21);
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, 13>(strip6, 23);

Appreciate any help!

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@Tim_Lukasik ​ are you running the same animation across all the strips, or is each strip running it’s own?
I accidentally setup a slew of 18’ strips, not of equal length - but I have the animation setup for the longest strip, all the other strips just followed along, although they weren’t as long…
The data signal was just split out to each strip with power on the side.

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@Terkel_Sorensen ​ it will be a little bit of both. I will send the same animation to all strips and also want to control then individually.

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I know that I can send the animation down each strip with the max length but then rainbow on the shortest strip does Roy G. Instead of Roy.G.Biv. hope that makes sense.

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@Tim_Lukasik ​ ok. I follow you. Would you do Roy G. Only on the shortest strip, or would it happen on different strips (possibly random)?
I think adafruit has a tutorial on this - it might be a good starting point for separating the strips… Check their learn section.

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I’m not wanting to do Roy G., that’s what happens when you send code to an 11 pixel strip that is meant for a 23 pixel strip…it gets truncated. My challenge is that the functions built in FastLED get passed the NUM_LEDS which is a constant in all the sketches, my NUM_LEDS will vary. And I don’t know how to handle that.

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Anyone else have any suggestions?

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@Tim_Lukasik , would something like this work for your setup?

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That worked perfectly, exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much for your help @marmil

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You’re welcome, glad it will help. Share some pics later if you can.

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Hey @marmil I need a little more assistance. Your rainbow solutions worked perfectly but I wanted to add some new animations to make it more dynamic. I’d like to have all LEDs turned to a color (random would be fine) but then pulse brightness from the data entry point to the end of the LED. Would be amazing to have that pulse “timed” so that it moves down each strip at the same time and ends at the same time. Again, thanks in advance for your help. I plan on posting some pictures and videos next week :slight_smile:

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As long as you update all strips before doing show() they will all update together and synchronized pulses could move down together. Give it a try and when you run into trouble create a new post so more people can see it to help, and share your code to pastebin.
Looking forward to your video.

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Thanks Jose, I read this before and its a great tutorial. I was more in need of help understanding how FastLED worked with multiple strips of different lengths. With some help from others I figured it out.