Hi! Great to join the community, and looking forward to learning from you all.
I’m building an 8’ tall electric sheep! Here’s my scaled down sheep that I built to test setups on before building the big sheep. Essentially, each LED (I work with WS2812b, but am open to suggestions of brighter LEDs) will comprise a 6" wooden square (it’s going to be a large wooden lattice). I’m going to run the LED’s down the middle of the each cube, and the LEDs will be about 3" from my diffusion paper. I made a test cube to test luminosity, and determined that I just don’t have enough brightness for my liking.
One approach to this issue I’m considering is having 2 LEDs in each cube, thinking that it will make the overall display brighter. But as a LED coding beginner, I’m not sure what my approach should be. Here’s my current map. My goal is to have each LED in each set of 2 LED’s per cube would display the exact same way. I’d bet this isn’t the right way, but I essentially want it to resemble this map. Just to be clear, in cell E1, I’d like LEDs 0 and 1 to receive the same exact data at the same time.
I know this isn’t a crystal clear explanation, but I hope it does the trick! Thanks for reading. If anyone could nudge me in the right direction, I’d be so grateful! Cheers, John
Hi @Folzams ,
Welcome!
I think the easiest would be to run two strings in parallel. You can take the data output and run it to two inputs, and they will show the same pixels. From Pixelblaze’s perspective there’s only one, less to think about, and less work to render pixels.
Thanks @wizard ! That definitely would do the trick—thank you for the suggestion! The only drawback with this approach would be 2x the soldering (4x the soldering, if I make it double sided!). That’s why I was thinking of doubling up in series. But, I love building/soldering, so this might be what I run with if I don’t find an in-series approach as I was hoping for. Thanks a lot!
Oh, well if running one string and putting pairs in each is easier, then that’s easy enough to do via a pixel map. Each squares coordinate would be listed twice. Then any 2d render would end up with the same colors for each in the pair.
Also, if you can’t find a bright enough configuration with “normal” LEDs, there are a lot of higher powered options out there (although they cost a little more, require more power and more planning for how to configure power, etc.) Here are a few examples:
Thanks @zranger1 ! I’ve considered the AdaFruit option before, but will definitely check out the other options. I’m not sure I have the budget, as the LED count might be 452 if I go double sided. Thanks again for these links; bookmarked.