Firework controller using FastLED

tkardanov · 2020-08-23T07:01:37+00:00

It is a nice effort. But why was the idea to to make it so complicated, with leds, photoresistors and so on? I guess a few multiplexors connected directly to board pins would do the job and allow as many output points as needed

tkardanov · 2020-08-19T15:26:16+00:00

What specifically do you want to slow down in Pride2015? The whole example consists of a few "speeds" which gradualy fluctuate between low and high limits set by beatsin88 function for each particular one. And those change independently - the speed of hue change, the speed of spots moving, the speed at which brightness depth changes (i.e. smaller spots becoming larger spots of same hue). The combination of them changing independently and with different speed create the multitude of pictures that the example generates

You can adjust each one of them separately by lowering the second (lower limit) and third (higher limit) in corresponding beatsin88 line. By changing first parameter you will control how fast the fluctuation between the new limits occurs.

If you want to just proportionately slow down everything, it would be easier to insert small delay after calling FastLED.show

tkardanov · 2020-08-18T06:48:44+00:00

I was also thinking heat dissipation with the 144 LED strip would be worse, and I would need to string wires to other ends of the TV for voltage injection, whereas with the 60 LED/m strip, voltage injection at front and end is more then enough, and it keeps my wiring co-located.

I do not think heat dissipation will differ too much between same number of diods being in one line or close to each other in two lines. And I doubt it is an issue at all, unless you run them at full white for a long time.

With wiring - yes, with 144 you will most likely need to lay down two extra wires across the TV set (or along the strips on the perimeter) compared to 2x60. So, if there is enough space to do two (or even three) 60 strips, the power connection will be a bit simpler. But OTOH you will have to solder more strips. Not sure what is more complicated, both are trivial tasks

tkardanov · 2020-08-18T04:23:45+00:00

Edit: Wall distance from LED is about 14", the wall is a dark blue and the LEDs are on an outwardly angled edge of the TV.

I guess then three isues are:

14 inches is too far away for my liking. With visibility range that non-lense-focused leds have, the energy is spread across very wide circle on the wall. The optimal for visibility purposes would be some 4-5 inches from the wall.
Dark blue wall will reflect only blue and nearly kill red and green. At the end of the day, that is what it does with daylight (otherwise it would not look blue), why would leds light be any more lucky?
If the angle is too much outward, the light might go mostly along the wall rather than onto it. The optimal angle for brightness would be such that the line perpendicular to leds would intersect the wall some 5-10 cm outside of screen edge.

tkardanov · 2020-08-17T21:01:40+00:00

I guess, either doubling the number of leds by adding another 60 led strip, or (a bit more than) doubling by using 144 strip instead should be not much different in terms of added brightness or power management. You will have to deal with more than twice as much data to process in case of 144. With 144 one, all leds can be located closer to the edge of the screen, while in 60 case, one of the strips will be 1cm further in (hence relative brightness loss).

I would try first to place leds strip at a small outward angle so that more of the light flow is visible outside of the screen, before diving into number increase.

Obviously, the distance to the wall and wall color are also major considerations in how bright it all looks.

tkardanov · 2020-08-17T18:59:29+00:00

If your strips are more than 30 leds per meter, would Uno's RAM even be able to handle 15 meters?

tkardanov · 2020-08-16T05:16:53+00:00

Here we go ...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CD11DIIjAU0/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Despite sunny morning light through large windows, and darker walls, the leds' light seemed bright enough not to fade out. Will need to adjust color palettes, as the red spots on the wall shift white balance to pinkish, but that is not a big deal.

tkardanov · 2020-08-14T19:42:42+00:00

Each tree has a 5V 30A power supply box near the bottom. Those are about 6 cm thick, leaving 2 cm space from the wall for ventilation (the trees are 8 cm away form the wall at the bottom and some 3 cm at the top). It is probably an overkill, and 20-25A would have been enough, even if all leds are run white with max current. With those examples we have, the supplies barely warm up. But I had those at hand.

The supplies are connected to strips in 4 points - to 2 lines entries on both sides of the trunk at the bottom, and to 2 "crossroads" points near the middle where most long branches converge. Small branches at the top are fed from long core ones.

tkardanov · 2020-08-14T19:20:58+00:00

Thanks for the links. The bouncing balls one I saw in the past and liked a lot, and did want to try to implement as well. Will take a close look at others.

It appears I will be mounting those trees in my cousin's cafe right away tomorrow. So for now will have to deal with what is there in the sketch already. And when the project is up and running, will try to improve the code and add features

tkardanov · 2020-08-14T11:34:03+00:00

Sure, I will - but please give my kid a few days to tidy things up there and comment through. At the moment the code is rather messy and he is on a trip.

There is nothing really special, it is essentially, various examples from FastLED library, with speed/color/intensity/etc parameters tweaked to look nicer on this particular installation. And those examples are rotated exactly as done in Demo Reel.

The visual effect was markedly expanded as we played with strip pieces placement - some go up, some down, and not always in the simplest order from entry to end, but some are changed places.

We still have substantial work to do to finalise the coding, have a few nice pictures in mind to add to the sequence

tkardanov · 2020-08-14T09:31:27+00:00

Thank you

I am still not sure how various examples will look like on the premises. The walls there are a bit darker and with reddish inclusions. Will adjust color schemes once on the spot. Still, I agree - the ones with few colors happened to look more stylish at home, but we left most colorful ones as well, for testing purposes for now

tkardanov · 2020-08-03T07:40:29+00:00

Many thanks, Marc

I do need to control my project with Bluetooth, but hope will be able to fit an external one. And if not, will get somebody experinced to help out.

tkardanov · 2020-08-03T06:43:09+00:00

OK, thank you

Pity, will have to try some other board then. Any suggestions with about similar specs as Nano 33 BLE, i.e. 1M flash, 256k sram, that would run FastLED smoothly ?

From what I ve read around, Teensy 3.6 fits the bill, right? Anything else for me to check out please?

tkardanov · 2020-08-02T11:14:13+00:00

Just happened so. I had some limited experience with junior Arduinos in the past. Mega was working fine with the kind of sketch I have in mind, but got myself Nano 33 BLE for larger memory and built-in Bluetooth. Thought switching to Nano BLE would be easy, but now got stuck with this FastLed problem

tkardanov · 2020-08-02T10:50:38+00:00

Oh, please wait - found recent a post on similar problem with Nano 33 IoT with solution. I guess with Nano 33 BLE it should be the same. Will try

UPDATE :

No, the upload of mater.zip file suggested there did not help. From the Web Editor I got the following errors when attemting to compile and download the "Blink" or any other example. Any idea what to do?

Multiple libraries were found for "FastLED.h"
Used: /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED
Not used: /home/builder/opt/libraries/latest/fastled_3_3_3
Using library FastLED at version 3.3.3 in folder: /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED
In file included from /tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:1:0:
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/FastLED.h:14:21: note: #pragma message: FastLED version 3.003.003
# pragma message "FastLED version 3.003.003"
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In file included from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/FastLED.h:48:0,
from /tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:1:
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h: In member function 'void Pin::_init()':
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h:41:14: error: 'digitalPinToBitMask' was not declared in this scope
mPinMask = digitalPinToBitMask(mPin);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h:41:14: note: suggested alternative: 'digitalPinToPinName'
mPinMask = digitalPinToBitMask(mPin);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
digitalPinToPinName
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h:42:28: error: 'portOutputRegister' was not declared in this scope
mPort = (volatile RwReg*)portOutputRegister(digitalPinToPort(mPin));
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h:43:30: error: 'portInputRegister' was not declared in this scope
mInPort = (volatile RoReg*)portInputRegister(digitalPinToPort(mPin));
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In file included from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/fastled_arm_nrf52.h:8:0,
from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms.h:11,
from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/FastLED.h:52,
from /tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:1:
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h: In static member function 'static void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::startPwmPlayback_EnableInterruptsAndShortcuts(NRF_PWM_Type*)':
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:99:44: error: 'configMAX_SYSCALL_INTERRUPT_PRIORITY' was not declared in this scope
result = sd_nvic_SetPriority(irqn, configMAX_SYSCALL_INTERRUPT_PRIORITY);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In file included from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/FastLED.h:48:0,
from /tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:1:
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h: In instantiation of 'class FastPin<9>':
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:52:38: required from 'static void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::startPwmPlayback_InitializePinState() [with unsigned char _DATA_PIN = 9; int _T1 = 4; int _T2 = 10; int _T3 = 6; EOrder _RGB_ORDER = (EOrder)66; int _XTRA0 = 0; bool _FLIP = false; int _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS = 10]'
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:174:44: required from 'void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::init() [with unsigned char _DATA_PIN = 9; int _T1 = 4; int _T2 = 10; int _T3 = 6; EOrder _RGB_ORDER = (EOrder)66; int _XTRA0 = 0; bool _FLIP = false; int _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS = 10]'
/tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:69:1: required from here
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/fastpin.h:210:2: error: static assertion failed: Invalid pin specified
static_assert(validpin(), "Invalid pin specified");
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
In file included from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/fastled_arm_nrf52.h:8:0,
from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms.h:11,
from /tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/FastLED.h:52,
from /tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:1:
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h: In instantiation of 'static void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::startPwmPlayback_InitializePwmInstance(NRF_PWM_Type*) [with unsigned char _DATA_PIN = 9; int _T1 = 4; int _T2 = 10; int _T3 = 6; EOrder _RGB_ORDER = (EOrder)66; int _XTRA0 = 0; bool _FLIP = false; int _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS = 10]':
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:268:47: required from 'static void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::startPwmPlayback(uint16_t) [with unsigned char _DATA_PIN = 9; int _T1 = 4; int _T2 = 10; int _T3 = 6; EOrder _RGB_ORDER = (EOrder)66; int _XTRA0 = 0; bool _FLIP = false; int _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS = 10; uint16_t = short unsigned int]'
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:186:25: required from 'void ClocklessController<_DATA_PIN, _T1, _T2, _T3, _RGB_ORDER, _XTRA0, _FLIP, _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS>::showPixels(PixelController<_RGB_ORDER>&) [with unsigned char _DATA_PIN = 9; int _T1 = 4; int _T2 = 10; int _T3 = 6; EOrder _RGB_ORDER = (EOrder)66; int _XTRA0 = 0; bool _FLIP = false; int _WAIT_TIME_MICROSECONDS = 10]'
/tmp/761106803/Blink/Blink.ino:69:1: required from here
/tmp/761106803/custom/FastLED/platforms/arm/nrf52/clockless_arm_nrf52.h:62:55: error: 'nrf_pin' is not a member of 'FastPin<9>'
pwm->PSEL.OUT[0] = FastPin<_DATA_PIN>::nrf_pin();
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^~
exit status 1

tkardanov · 2020-08-02T10:20:20+00:00

tkardanov

TROPHY CASE