In a Facebook group, some folks were talking about https://www.gemstonelights.com/ . I was just wondering if it was possible to turn specific LEDs on a strip off or on.
I don’t know about these, but @mnielsen’s http://mypixellights.com/ certainly are individually controllable and work great with Pixelblaze. They snap into your gutters, among other mounting options.
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From their website, I’d guess that are most likely individually addressable. Whether or not they’ll let you program them the way you want is the question. A lot of recent IoT products aimed at the mass consumer market trade flexibility for some degree of turnkey operation. Also, they tend to require cloud connection to operate. IMO, these are the first steps on the road to wielding the red lightsaber…
+1 for http://mypixellights.com. I have @mnielsen’s PixelLights on my house too, and love them.
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Oh, I didn’t mean using Gemstone’s lights. I was wondering if the PB could do so with a WS2812 strand.
[EDIT] MyPixelLights are $10 a foot? Woof…
Thanks @zranger1 and @jeff for the shout out. We designed our lights to be a different solution to permanent accent (Christmas) lighting than Gemstone. A lot of time goes into making them easy to use and DIY. We’ll be doing a kickstarter soon, and the pricing will be really good. Regular pricing will be lower than $10/foot - CAD, our site is being redone right now.
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On on/off state for individual pixels: You can do this with Pixelblaze. The multisegment pattern does it. Essentially, you just set the pixels you want “off” to black. If Gemstone is using any of the “normal” LEDs (WS2812-like) that aren’t wired to be individually powered off, they’re doing it in software too. There’s some power savings - more with ECO-type LEDs, but the whole strip is still powered.
To ensure a real “off” state, I’ve wired all my home lighting Pixelblazes, indoors and out through either ZWave relays (outdoors) or cheap Zigbee smart outlets (indoors). It saves electricity, reduces wear and tear on Pixelblaze and LEDs, and keeps me from worrying about stuff I might have left on when I’m away during the day.
Full disclosure on PixelLights : Matt very generously gave me a bunch of surplus previous version lights with his only ask being that I do something interesting with them, keep him informed as to how they’re working in my sometimes harsh environment, and occasionally send pictures. So if I say anything nice about them, it’s totally on my own time.
I’m sure he’ll set a price point for the new lights that is fair, and balances the extra design, support and service requirements that go with making long-lived things that mount permanently on people’s houses. Personally, I was very, very skeptical about the need for RGB lighting on the house, but after living with them for a while, I have to admit that it’s a fine idea. It simply makes the house better.
They are extremely bright – bright enough that I need no other outdoor lighting on the sides of the house where they’re installed. They run at 12 volts and use heavier than normal wire between LEDs, so with power just at both ends of my roughly 100 foot run, I’ve had no problems with voltage drop.
They’ve also done well in our windy, dusty, occasionally wet and muddy winter. The 120 degree summer, which is harder on LEDs and electronics in general? Well, we’re going to find out!
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Hey, thought I’d post an update on this thread. Our Kickstarter is live, and there are still some good deals left. The Kickstarter doesn’t show a lot of information on the controller, but there will be an App with some cool features to make the user experience easier for less technical folks. It’s a PBv3 with a custom expander board similar to the pro - with 4 fused outputs. The pixel strings are 24v, and you can do 225’ in a single run. Also the complete system will have ETL certification for North America.
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They look really interesting, I can think of lots of applications.
Question: do they do white? Warm or cool white, not an rgb combination (that never really looks white).
Thanks.
Hey Nick, thanks!
The lights don’t have a separate white, we are using an rgb 5050 WS2815.
I use them on my house with the rgb white. I have some color picker patterns and space them out for an architectural look. Not perfect whites, but I think they look good.