Hi everyone- I am working on a project for BM with a friend to have wearable LEDs for our camp that all sync. We have 30 pico chips all wired up in hats, and all my tests (mistakenly) have been on client-mode. We have a “mother” chip that we were planning on using as the leader, and 30 hats all in follow mode. I recently tried in AP mode, since we will need that to move around burning man, and after some digging in the forums have learned that the chips are limited to 9 clients when in AP mode. Does anyone have recommendations for a way to still do this? Is there some extension maybe that we can add to the leader to connect to more of the hats? Or maybe a suggestion for something else, like a different chip that can create a network all the hats connect to (would have to be offline). Any tips would be helpful, thank you!
Here’s what we have so far!
Hi @spud ,
Awesome!
Is the intention for doing this around a central location, or will everyone be randomly wandering in different directions? There’s a lot of ways to do something like this, but it kind of depends on what you are going for.
Right, with a PB set in AP mode, there’s a limit to how many clients can connect over WiFi - thats independent of the group sync, just a basic wifi limit of the chips. To get around that, you can use a dedicated WiFi router / access point.
Group sync is also limited to around 10 or so in the current version. I have some builds that can work up to 30 that were used for the Bronco’s halftime show. I could share these with you, but know that it’s not a 100% polished version. The other thing this firmware did was massively increase the time it takes for a follower to fall back to a stand-alone pattern set when it can’t reach the leader. With 3.51 that happens after about a minute. If people are going to tend to wander off and want to change the pattern, that’s probably better.
With just a dedicated WiFi AP for all of the PBs to connect, they should automatically time sync even without group sync leaders set up. That is, if for any reason they are running the same pattern it would look the same and animate in sync, but you’d need some way to make them run all the same pattern. If you only had one pattern installed, that would just work by default without needing any further sync.
Another option is to use Firestorm, which was the only solution for this kind of thing before the group sync feature was built-in. Firestorm is an application that runs on a computer, it could be a raspberry pi or a laptop or something, and allows you to switch the patterns of many PB at the same time. The downside of Firestorm is that you have to copy patterns to each PB, whereas with the built-in group sync mode you don’t have to install anything, it just starts running. That, and needing a raspberry pi or something to run on.
You should be able to do both, followers shouldn’t show up in firestorm, so you could split things into 3-4 groups of smaller group sync leaders, then only need to coordinate the 3-4 leaders in firestorm.
Or set up 3-4 leaders, but using a dedicated WiFi AP/router, and just have the leaders switch to the same pattern manually.
Thank you for the response! I think the idea is that we would be mobile, and move around with a central leader dictating patterns to the followers. A friend helped me set up a raspberry pi this afternoon to act as a dedicated WiFi AP for this purpose, but maybe it’s worth trying to set up Firestorm on it to do the syncing? I think what we are aiming for is that for whatever subset of people are going out together (all 30, or maybe just 10-15), we can bring the single leader along and not have to worry about making sure the 3-4 group-sync leaders are there as well.
It sounds like maybe the more workable solutions for us are either to try your build you used for the Bronco halftime show (so cool by the way!) or to use Firestorm on the raspberry pi. It won’t be a problem to copy all the patterns to each PB, since we already have done that (although I am much less familiar with working with raspberry pi). Would you be able to share the build with group sync that worked up to 30? Does that build have to be on all of the PBs, or just the leader?
Thanks for the help!
Even a raspberry pi in AP mode can’t handle that many clients. I’ve used the small TP link routers before. There’s an older one that’s now around $30 that can be powered off of usb.
However, come to think of it, for the show we used a much nicer $$$$ ubiquiti AP that was designed for dense environments that has multiple channels of directional antennas. It just fit in a backpack but no one is going to want to haul that much gear on playa. I don’t think sync alone would work well enough with a $30 router for 30 PBs, but firestorm would be fine.
Yea, that special build has to be on all of them.
Ahh I see. Yeah I am getting the sense that we were ambitious with the number of hats we thought we could connect. Do you think the TP link router could connect up to 30 clients, plus the rasp pi with firestorm?
I can’t find any docs on the client limitations of that router (TL-WR802N). Worst case you could use two, link em up with ethernet and have two WiFi networks that have the same IP space. But there’s probably something better/newer out there that can handle it. Bandwidth shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Hey @wizard! I bought a travel router that supports all our hats, which should be good enough to move around the playa and act as an access point for our purposes. As an experiment we group-synced all 30 hats to a single leader chip- it seems to be doing alright, although it’s much slower to transition between patterns, and there’s always a couple that lag behind (by 10 or so seconds, depending on how far from the router they are). I know you said the group sync had a limit of ~10 clients- is there anything we should be worried about running 30 clients? Is it bad for the PB to have that many? We are also working on setting up a raspberry pi with firestorm as a back up, that might be the better option if we can get that working. Thanks for the help.
Such a cool idea/execution! I’ve done this on a much smaller scale but never got a big enough group to buy-in.
Given it’s a hat and assuming you’re trying to keep it lightweight, can I ask how your hardware is configured, like how you’re powering it and whether you have a case for the pico? Making something similar and trying to keep it lightweight but also protect it from the inevitable wear and tear of BM.
Thanks! We are using the picos- no case unfortunately, but we wrapped the whole pico (with the wires) in a large shrink tube, and it seems to be pretty sturdy. It’s also nested inside the hat in the batting that we added, that we can access through a slot that we made with some snap tape. I’m out of town right now but when I get back I can post some photos! Maybe see you out on the playa this year!
Oh and we are using 5000mah wallet size batteries that fit nicely in the top of the hat. Powering 50ish pixels set to 50% power, they last about 12-13hours
I’m glad it’s working! Whereabouts will you be? Would love to see them in action!
The biggest changes I had to make were to reduce chances for a regular network stampede. The sync beacons go out every second like clockwork. If you power all 30 on at the same moment it can overload the leader (causing missed packets) and that happens pretty much every second and the followers could drop out of the group making it somewhat unreliable.
If you power them up somewhat randomly then you might avoid that problem altogether.
I was also working with a massive pattern, and most PB patterns are small enough to not be an issue.
