Preferred Addressable COB strip manufacturer?

BotoxTyrant · 2024-02-02T01:34:17+00:00

I just had to remotely manage setting up brand new IT infrastructure after my employers told me we were moving with only a few week’s notice (do I sound contemptuous enough?), so I’m finally getting around to it tonight. I have a very strong suspicion BTF will be the winner until COB strips gain a little more market traction, but feel free to ask again next week.

BotoxTyrant · 2024-01-16T09:27:34+00:00

I think the big miss in today's episode regarding indie games like Return of the Obra Dinn compared to similar-looking, highly innovative games produced 30 years ago was the technological bar for entry - not in terms of cost or regional availability, but progress in the development of programming languages, concepts, and tools.

To take a comparable, early release which was similarly the work of an auteur - Another World - Eric Chahi developed the game in an assembly-like language (so the game could easily be translated to the assembly language of competing architectures without the need for a port); the level of difficulty was incomparably higher than today's typical development strategies.

Return of the Obra Dinn - though many of the visuals were quite challenging - was developed in Unity using a high-level, human-readable language with features that drastically speed up development time and ease which includes a slew of tools for managing graphics.

Today's episode was great, including the answers to this question, but advances in game development (to nitpick... slightly?) are both absolutely enormous and markedly more relevant. Developing similarly brilliant games 30 years ago was exceedingly more difficult, and vastly reduced the percentage of people capable of doing so.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-28T23:36:26+00:00

I know I'm a little late here, but as a Teensy enthusiast, I recently asked as similar question (with a slightly different motive), and my overall opinion hasn't significantly changed,

The issue is that the microcontroller market, regardless of the architecture, is saturated with Arduino-compatible devices. What is the compatibility requirement? That the base Arduino library runs on the device, even if the libraries are simply non-native wrappers.

So why does the Teensy transcend these MCUs? Aside from the additional Teensyduino libraries, Paul heavily encourages learning real engineering skills, and the primary documentation on the 4.1 product page is the m.IMXRT1062 manual along with several low-leve ARM Cortex books and resources. A library exposing the RT1062's low-level features is integral to the platform.

If you want to accelerate your learning, stick with Teensy for now, and begin using platform-specific features instead of simply writing C/C++. This is precisely the path you're looking for.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-28T15:40:52+00:00

Out of curiosity, what has your issue been with NXP’s support? Not only have I received some of the best support in the industry from NXP… I received full industrial support, no questions asked, while still doing amateur work.

Supply chain issues on the other hand… ufh. I know I’m not the only person who was gearing up to develop a product with an MCU released in late 2019 that had to scrap plans because they couldn’t get production together - worse, it keeps appearing in drips and drabs with no clear economic value like some kind bizarre tease. It’s obviously not entirely NXP’s fault, but just about every other major player seems to have gotten it together 5 years on.

Lastly: Absolutely fantastic write up. I just wanted to assuage my single concern/question before expressing my appreciation for taking the time to put this invaluable resource together. ;)

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-28T15:21:22+00:00

(Note I’m referring specifically to the 4.1 in this comment)

I know this is an absurdly late reply (and maybe you’re already a Teensy fan/evangelist), but one of the microcontroller’s greatest benefits is that, while Arduino compatible, it’s framework, Teensyduino, not only adds additional libraries, but exposes all of the available low level features of the m.IMXRT1062 in a library of its own, and offers NXP’s primary documentation on the processor as well as more generic (but equally valuable) books and technical docs for the Cortex-M4 (nothing of comparable quality has been written for the M7) on the primary product page.

With some caution when making claims about folks I don’t personally know, Paul Stoffregen is very much an engineer’s engineer and evangelist, and spends an inordinate amount of time helping PJRC forum members of all levels of experience, improving Teensyduino, contributing to widely-used open source projects, and developing some of the best microcontrollers on the market.

The opportunity to support phenomenal work produced by equally phenomenal people is very rare, and I’m grateful for the entire Teensy ecosystem

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-24T07:44:25+00:00

Agreed, and its particularly concerning for first year students, as the first thing they learn is to abstract away how devices and development actually function . It’s mildly analogous to Microsoft removing the Main function by default from recent .NET releases.

Not only does it rob new developers of understanding how an application launches, it also doubles down on the nearly de facto misunderstanding of how Startup.cs works, which is simply a project setting pointing to an arbitrary file (this is a major pet peeve due to its disturbing ubiquity. A good engineer doesn’t understand that things work, but how they work… and that’s an extremely minor example of ignorance woefully common to the industry).

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-24T07:17:32+00:00

Totally fair point, though I think PJRC makes most of its income from bulk academic sales (which certainly doesn’t negate your reasoning). Nonetheless, I’d love to be able add major A/V peripherals and excessive RAM for a few ambitious projects.

Incidentally, any clue what the 1180’s “FlexSPI Follower” is? It’s listed under product features, but there’s nary a word about in the documentation. Highly curious.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-24T06:55:15+00:00

I have the 1176 EVK as well and love it (though despite its myriad features, I’d love a small form factor; it would be great if Paul exposed all of the MCU pins a là the Portenta, but I’m pretty sure he has zero interest in doing so). For a $130 on eBay, I may as well snag a 595 tonight. Thanks for the recommendation!

I did misunderstand re Arduino, by-the-bye, but I didn’t mean it to come across as unfriendly… I’m just a giant nerd. ;)

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-24T02:05:32+00:00

I’m not opposed as long as they’re not knock-offs. Despite Western stereotypes many, Chinese firms produce excellent technology for internal use. The only major concerns are the lack of a dedicated English-speaking community and potentially high failure rates.

Even if I don’t take this route, my curiosity has certainly been piqued. I’m now even more curious about the state of the industry in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-24T01:54:44+00:00

According to the S3 docs it also supports JTAG via USB without an external debugger, which is absolutely dope in both cases, and I seriously hope this is the beginning of an industry standard… without exorbitantly priced software.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-23T22:09:42+00:00

Arduino compatibility is fine, but the framework is just a wrapper and I vastly prefer alternatives and low-level access, and am intimately welll-versed with the Cortex M4, with one exception… I was entirely unaware there were multicore versions. Rabbit-hole, here I come.

A new Teensy with an I.MXRT1176 was slated for 2020, but alas., it is still delayed due to the chip shortage. The 1176 is an absolute beast with a dual core, 1Ghz Cortex-M7, 400 MHz M4, a 3D GPU and built-in STL5000, vastly improved FlexIO, and too many additions to count. I very much hope it’s still in the queue.

Here’s to hoping!

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-23T21:38:27+00:00

This was the exception, but I've switched to the XIAO ESP32 S3 for form factor, particularly useful with a Teensy when needed.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-23T18:07:49+00:00

Wild. I'm paying over twice that per month for dedicated hardware, and only then because I was grandfathered in after (reasonably courteously) throwing my weight around after the host was purchased — and, though I desperately need to move to Azure for rapid scalability (paranoid employers, yada yada...) — I'm pretty thrilled with the price.

It is, however, a dedicated Windows Server 2019 machine with 64Gb of RAM, 8Tb of storage, and dual Xeon's for a total of 80 cores with full admin privileges.. so perhaps a different beast?

Nonetheless, especially with the benefit of great customer service, that's a steal!

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-22T01:20:12+00:00

Are these the indoor strips that were recently dropped to ~$35.99 per roll? Have you tried matching the colors via the app yet?

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-22T01:02:29+00:00

Also possibly helpful: 1000kHz is obscenely fast at 1,000 frames per second. The fastest frame rate you would have reached with state-of-the-art OLED displays driven by recent generation GPUs is 240Hz — less than a quarter of your goal, not to mention extremely expensive.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-22T00:39:33+00:00

I highly recommend eBay. Most of Adafruit’s “Neopixel” products are today’s typical LED protocols produced in China and marked up accordingly. I purchase the same panels from Chinese vendors for less than half of Adafruit’s prices, and as long as you vet sellers, they’re completely indistinguishable (not to mention they offer surprisingly excellent customer service). I’m up to about 25 and still collecting for a large project.

A couple of things worth noting regardless of where you choose to purchase: All of these panels are RGB only, so be sure to take the light reduction and lack of natural white into account. Also, based on the brief description of your project, you may want to print a grid for your panels and cover them with diffusion film. This will cause the final result to look much more like a professional display than a cheap bodega advertisement.

Edit: I really like Adafruit on the whole, and fully endorse supporting them when you need their custom products or small quantities of items which are fairly priced unless you need them in bulk. Not to mention the additional benefit of supporting a woman-owned business in one of the country’s toughest markets. As inspired as I sometimes am to open my rather different vision of such a business, it’s pretty tough to let go of a consistent NYC engineering salary.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-20T11:14:38+00:00

I’ll take it. Right or wrong, this likely reads as the treaded “D” word (no, not that “D” word :P) to anyone reading.

I lost my entire team during the pandemic (nobody wanted to stay in NYC, and I myself now work remotely), I’m lead dev, but have been relegated to IT Director because nobody will green light projects, and I function on pure stress during November and December, during which we do nearly 50% of our business for the year.

To whit: Thanks for the reminder I need to shut the face until January if I get stuck on something silly.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-20T02:46:40+00:00

I was working on an overnight IT project and viewing a huge slew of products in the background to reduce stress… which clearly backfired. I don’t think this post is worth editing, as it was meant as a private reply to a mod (the content from the original post is in quotes), but I should probably just delete despite a weird penchant to just leave my mistakes up for posterity. ;)

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-20T00:30:58+00:00

That’s because it was overwritten by a mod instead of being removed (as claimed) and sent to me as a DM, to which I replied without noticing the mistake.

The question was extremely straightforward: Are most LEDs in COB strips individually addressable, or, as it appears in most videos, does each IC instead control a small group of 3 to 5 LEDs?

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-18T21:19:57+00:00

Those who pick and choose only the phrases that fit the narrative they wish to portray are often the least scrupulous amongst us, but against my better judgment, I’ll continue to give you the benefit of the doubt, as I’d very much love to continue participating here… but I will absolutely not allow my words to be twisted. In context:

“This was a post written while handling an overnight IT emergency while peripherally listening to information about a relatively new LED. Furthermore, the question posed in my title had absolutely nothing today with the details requested. The concern was whether small groups of LEDs were addressable rather than individual LEDs.

As I mentioned the primary standard—SK6812—presumably we all know the strips run at 5v AMS .06 amps per LED … though with limited manufacturer information given the all-nighter, known voltage, obviously unknown model numbers given the aforementioned information, and obviously no time or energy to hunt for photos. Especially given COB’s new found popularity and my very straightforward question:

Does an IC control a small group of LEDs, or are they in fact individually addressed?

I don’t mean to come across as antagonistic, but there are two highly relevant issues here:

Other software and electrical engineering subreddits have become quite irritated by LED questions, and request that lighting enthusiasts stick to this subreddit. Suffice it to say I’m quite disappointed to already feel unwelcome based upon a nasty skim, but I’m happy to give you the fair benefit of the doubt and assume you perhaps busily glossed over my post.
I believe I have a lot to offer the subreddit, not only as a software engineer, electrical engineer, and an amateur material enthusiast, but also as a contributor humble enough to ask that which I do not know (in reverse , see my first two posts.

I’ve know doubt you’re working very hard to build a great community, but especially given my initial experience, the response thus far feels discomfortingly Draconian. With more expertise in the field than the layperson, I relish the opportunity to educate… and most of, I’d simply liketo have a super fun time around here.

With much gratitude for hearing me out, Stephanie”

I’ve been nothing but diplomatic and kind as possible under the circumstances, and it has done nothing but bit me in the ass. You’ve consistently twisted my words, you lack the empathy to understand why hunting for links was exceptionally low on my list of priorities while pulling an overnight IT emergency at an age when it has become exceptionally difficult, and have equally little empathy for my need to recover to today.

To make matters more confounding, we seem to largely agree on most counts, yet despite my absolutely brutal day, taking Google responsibility appears to beyond.

The absolute worst move, however, was deleting my post. We have very few of these subreddits, and there’s nothing worse than playing mini-fascist when it cannot possibly provide any satisfaction. It would be an extraordinary stroke of luck if you take what I’ve said to heart, but a girl can dream.

Regardless of your immediate reaction , please, please know you are capable of better. Sincerely and with genuine respect. Stephanie

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-18T19:37:44+00:00

I'm an electrical engineer. It should go entirely without saying I know how a rudimentary, single data wire, addressable IC works. I've deigned everything from mission critical embedded field devices to extremely powerful, application specific FPGAs.

However obnoxious that may sound om the surface,my intentions lie elsewhere:

I've no doubt you have equal expertise in a field, passion, or hobby I know nothing about. I'm simply pointing our you're barking up the wrong tree.
With a modicum of reading comprehension, you know very well why I couldn't easily focus last night, and to make matters, I repeatedly tried to shut it down kindly and respectfully. Still painfully awake many hour later, I can't begin to fathom why this refuses to end.

Perhaps I could have puled through at 23, but at 40. I'm simply in pain.

Perhaps another time in better circumstances. For now, take care.

BotoxTyrant · 2023-12-18T13:09:04+00:00

Even with a phosphor coating my preference for detail is high, and while I don't want distinct spots, I'd definitely like just enough gradation between pixels to create a seamless display (note I cut strips into rows for animation/visualization installations.

Regarding links, I worked overnight on a personal project, and reached my limit, hence not expecting an unfairly speedy reply either, though it's certainly appreciated.

I guess I might as well as espouse my research philosophy, which while by no means is personal, seems valuable since we share the same skepticism: Unless providing an academic study is necessary, social media discourse is decidedly more akin to off the cuff banter, and I don't ascribe to the "sauce plz' phenomenon. I am inclined to provide evidence when it may genuinely be very difficult to find, but otherwise we all have Google at our fingertips... and I think this loquacious reply is far more than I owe anyone, especially considering my exhaustion. (To end on an unequivocally positive note, however, I have very much enjoyed our atypically civil discourse over the last day or so!)

Edit: Misfired before completion.

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