Category Archives: LEDs

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”

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 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”

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!”

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”

As a part of my project to scale beyond the ~4000 pixels that Teensy 3.2 supports at 60Hz, I’m looking into ways of using multiple Teensy 3.2’s and farming out pixels to each of them. The idea would be to build a simple “Branch Controller” consisting of a Teensy 3.2, a WIZnet W5500 Ethernet adapter,Continue reading “Teensy 3.2 + Ethernet”

The Story So Far In investigating how to drive enormous numbers of WS2812b LEDs from Arduino-style controllers at 60 fps or faster, I found that a pretty solid option is the Teensy 3.2 with the OctoWS2811 adapter board which can drive up to 4400 pixels. But what if you need more pixels? A common approachContinue reading “Interlude: BeagleBones”

Maybe you want to build something for a big thing in the desert. And the desert is wide and large and your thing is going to be really, really, big. For example, the Tree of Ténéré by Zachary Smith and team has 175,000 LEDs. That is significantly higher than the 4416 LEDs that you canContinue reading “So you need more than 4000 addressable LEDs”

If you’re just joining me, I’m trying to redo the LED lighting on this 46′-tall antenna: My earlier experiments were all about speed, trying to increase the frame rate from last year’s abysmal 17 Hz to something better than 60 Hz. I decided I could easily double the number of LEDs and use single TeensyContinue reading “APA102c versus WS2815 LED Strips”

I found an easy way to measure the exact frame rate you’re getting on your WS2812b animations using an oscilloscope.