So, you’ve got yourself a reel of those gorgeous new pebble lights. I don’t blame you! They are gorgeous. Coated in silicon, they are impervious to water and dust, nicely diffuse, and very flexible, so they can safely be used in costumes and stuff that will flex a lot. Each pebble is an individually-addressible 5VContinue reading “Soldering pebble lights”
Author Archives: Blinky Lights Blogger
Single Cat-6 Power and Data for WS2815 LED strips
One of the biggest hassles with addressable LED strip installations is that you usually end up running data and power separately. Sure, in theory, a Neopixel type installation just needs three conductors – one for data, one for ground, and one for +5V or +12V. In practice this doesn’t work on large installations for twoContinue reading “Single Cat-6 Power and Data for WS2815 LED strips”
Using Teensy 4.0 or 4.1 With FastLED
Updated 20 April, 2024 Got a Teensy 4.1? Want to use it with FastLED? You’ve come to the right place. The Teensy 4.1 is an incredibly powerful microcontroller at a very reasonable price, and FastLED is still one of the best libraries for driving WS2812 type addressable LEDs from microcontrollers. Paul Stoffregen, creator of Teensy,Continue reading “Using Teensy 4.0 or 4.1 With FastLED”
Teensy 4.1 is Amazing
For the future Turtle Antenna, I’m using 16 of these “flex led” strips. Each strip is 5 meters of WS2815 in a nice IP68 frosty silicone sleeve which creates beautiful, diffuse pastel colors. They are 60 pixels per meter so I’m using a total of 4800 LEDs. If you asked me a year ago IContinue reading “Teensy 4.1 is Amazing”
Power Injection
I have been experimenting with various ways to build power injection cables for long runs of LEDs that will be outdoors in suboptimal conditions. Here’s what I came up with, all using parts easily procured from Amazon. This is the power supply I chose. I like it because it is already reasonably weatherproof. I haveContinue reading “Power Injection”
Transmitting WS2812b Signals Over Longer Distances
The WS2812b protocol is a fairly simply protocol based on toggling the data pin between 0v and 5v. That makes something akin to a square wave. I have heard people refer to this hardware protocol as TTL (“transistor to transistor logic”) and it is common on circuit boards. The trouble with this square wave isContinue reading “Transmitting WS2812b Signals Over Longer Distances”
Big, Interactive LED Art!
I thought it might be fun to learn how some of the really big, interactive, inspiring LED art was built. I’m talking about things like: All of these great works of art were build with dedicated, smart teams, custom hardware, and amazing code. I realized I had to learn about pixel-addressable LEDs, electrical engineering, embeddedContinue reading “Big, Interactive LED Art!”
The Branch Controller Circuit Board
The plot so far: suppose you want to build a large, pixel-addressable LED installation with the following parameters: Runs at 60 frames per second More than 4400 LEDs Fully-programmable from a PC or otherwise Survives the desert You can run a Teensy 3.2 with the FastLED library and parallel output on 8 different pins: thatContinue reading “The Branch Controller Circuit Board”
Control your projects with IR Remote Controls!
When you build electronics projects for the desert you always need some kind of basic controls. For LED projects you might want brightness controls, for example, or buttons which switch between various preset visual programs. The trouble is that it’s very hard to come up with a reliable way to have pushbuttons and knobs whichContinue reading “Control your projects with IR Remote Controls!”
Some useful tips on single wire protocols
I built this cute little board with 16 LED strips arranged in a star to use as a test bed for my upcoming projects. In doing so, I made a couple of mistakes and learned the hard way how to drive these very finicky strips. I figured that all 16 strips could just share aContinue reading “Some useful tips on single wire protocols”