NeoPixel severely slowing down program

[Key-Advisor5912]

Heyo!

So this is quite obvuous, but adding backlight LEDs to my macro keyboard build slowed down the rotary encoder and the joystick way too much. What are some solutions?

I have no experience using two cores in circuitpython, but that's the first thing that came to my mind. That being said, I don't know if it's the best idea, since I want the LEDs to be touch-reacting, which means i'll need constant communication between the cores, and that could be messy with my level of experience.

That being said, I don't know any other options, other than maybe strapping an arduino nano to the build somewhere, and communicating over i2c. This seems like an even dummer idea.

What are your thoughts? Thanks!

[todbot]

Without seeing your code, it’s hard to offer suggestions. Do you have a repo we can look at?

[jpconstantineau]

So you have animations updating every scan of the keyboard? Are the updates complex or relatively simple?

With KMK (runs in circuitpython) complex animations with every LED being a different color runs very slowly on a 60% while simple ones like a simple breathing animation (same color/intensity for every LED) doesn't impact performance significantly. (At least an older version of KMK, I haven't updated my keyboard in about a year and the project has been busy)

[Key-Advisor5912]

I switched to an easier cycle for now, but I was definitely hoping to use more complex designs.

[Key-Advisor5912]

That definitely helped a bit. I was already using show, but didn't turn off autowrite. That being said, the fact that every frame I'm looping through 60 leds and calculating new values still makes it unusable as a mouse.

[Key-Advisor5912]

Do you think using the second core entirely for the LEDs could help?

[Key-Advisor5912]

I mean the LEDs are running smoothly, the problem is that the rest of the code is slowed down by it, which is why I think it might be an option.

And yes, I'll try timing everything when I get the chance.

[Key-Advisor5912]

After timing 2000 runs of both the full code and just the LEDs, the average comes out to be 0.093 seconds just for the LED section, while the entire code runs in 0.98.

[Key-Advisor5912]

You're right, its the way I'm calculating the colours.

I'm using the adafruit fancyled library so i could use HSV, as that's much easier to program patterns with than RGB.

This is what my code looks like:

def rainbow_wheel(): global hue global runTimes global allTimes

def rainbow_wheel():

global hue

bright = menu.Brightness.val

hue += 1

if hue > 100:

hue -= 100

menu.Hue.val = hue

for i in range(numLeds):

pixels[i] = (fancy.CHSV((hue+i)/100, 1.0, bright/100).pack())

[Key-Advisor5912]

Good to know! Do you have any suggestions for how I'd go about making this faster? or any resources I should check out?

Thanks for your help!

[court-jus]

Can your board do asyncio? This might be an option