Project Reflection – June 18, 2020

I have quite enjoyed this project.

There have been ups and downs, but what surprised me how hard it can be sometimes to find really good information. I was doing hours of research before I found the Github page that has all the correct libraries for what I was trying to do. I was also surprised at how good it felt when I got to fulfillment of having my stuff work, after many painful hours of soldering, coding, and trouble shooting.

This project made me closer to people like Jonathan my mentor, as he advised me and helped me through this project. It was also fun to talk about my work to friends.

I have also been getting closer to God, through this project, whether it was listening, and worshiping, or asking for God to help me through struggles, he has been with me through it all.

The biggest problems was probably doing research and finding the write resources for my project, as it is not a super popular thing for people to do, therefor there isn’t too much help from the internet for things like trouble shooting. The biggest reward was definitely to see video from my laptop get projected onto 500 blinding LEDS. Definitely worth the work

Project Update – June 17, 2020

I have created a 20×29 matrix of LEDs, and I have got them correctly configured with the Arduino. I have included a link to a video of the matrix working.

Unfortunately I have had to cut out the last couple strips in the matrix because it seems my system cannot handle all 580 pixels. I’m still searching for the bottle neck in the system. It seems to work well up until the 540-550 pixel mark, then starts lagging quite a bit. I first thought the bottleneck was the Arduino Mega, so I replaced it with the much more powerful Arduino Due, but to my disappointment, the problem persisted. I also tried different software, I knew Onyx should be able to handle the 1,740 channels that the matrix uses, but it couldn’t hurt to try, so I got a licence for Resolume, but that still didn’t fix it. The only thing I can think of that would be causing this issue is the ethernet shield, as that is the only thing I haven’t switched out.

I saw in the issues forum on Github for the source code and Arduino libraries, someone was running upwards of 13 universes of DMX with the same software I was using, and I’m having lagging issues with only 4 universes. The only difference was they were using a Teensy development board, which is quite a bit more pricey than the Arduino due, but much more powerful. I have not received the board yet but I am hoping this will solve the issue.

I also designed and printed a dope enclosure for the open PCBs.

Project Update – May 22, 2020

I have been working hard these last 2 weeks, on getting an Arduino with an ethernet shield configured with the correct protocol.

Right now I have an Arduino mega set up for 300 pixels (one 5m strip)to receive Artnet and send it to the LEDs.

At the moment I am using Dylos, in a program called Onyx, because I have both a good understanding of how it works, and I also already have an appropriate licence for the amount of channels I am using. In the future though, I would like to use either Madmapper or Resolume arena, as these are much more powerful programs, and I can run more complex effects, and run more pixels. But a license for either one of those is quite expensive.

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Project Update – May 8, 2020

People who don’t pixel map, don’t understand why you need so many channels of data.

These last 2 weeks I have been working on some Arduino code, and setting up my PSU and wiring for my WS2812b LEDs. I have included some images of my progress.

I have created a script that runs off the Fast LED library, and it just runs though a few example effects. You can see the effect that the individual addressing, of the LEDs has in the video I have attached.

I am using 5V 30A power supply, which is more than enough power for 600 LEDs that I plan on running off of it.

In the next few weeks I will be working on finding a solution to map images and videos to the LEDs, because right now I have very limited control over each individual pixel. I was going to design 3D print a custom enclosure for my Arduino and other electronics, but I will probably need to upgrade from a Arduino nano, to an Arduino mega, because I have a feeling that the Arduino nano wont have enough processing power for the complex protocols of most pixel mapping software. I will also probably need an ethernet shield for the Arduino, as I will probably be using Artnet(a common lighting protocol over ethernet).

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Project Update – April 24, 2020

I have been working on this project for 2-4 hours per week, since school was out. I have earlier I was working on some design stuff and I have created a model of of what I think I want it to look like with normal 5050 LED’s, which are not addressable, but it gives me a good idea of size and how its going to work. It has almost 588 pixels, which means if I want to do it to that size I’m probably going to need about 10 more meters of LED’s. I have also soldered the appropriate connectors to my Arduino nano, so I can easily connect the led’s to it.
Jonathan has also agreed to be my mentor, and he has been giving me advice on what PCB types would work best for what I’m doing.

This week I have been working on a bit of C+ code in to put on to the Arduino, to at least get them to turn on, and play around with effects, but eventually I want them to be fully mapped out, using something like Mad Mapper or Resolume. I have included pictures of my work below.

Introduction

Hello, my passion project is to get WS2812 LED’s to be addressed properly and eventually create a matrix that I can project images and videos to. There are devices that do this already like the Pixelator from Enntec, but thats expensive and I would like to do it simply with Arduino.