My Shambhala 2023 Totem

This is a totem I made for the Shambhala Music Festival this year. It’s 3 8x32 matrices stacked and wrapped to form a cylinder that’s 24 pixels high and 32 pixels around.

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thats fun! what are you using for power source? i feel like theres so much knowledge that could be shared and collaborated on for the packaging of power and wiring

I have 4 of these: https://a.co/d/ao3ntm0

I use them one at a time. They last several hours

Whoa… 4.8 amps is pretty nice for a portable battery. Are you able to draw that on a usb A connection?? I can rarely find more than 2.1 amps for that, and 3 if it’s 12v/

well, it’s 2.4amps for each USB port, and that’s about all I really need for this project.

Ah, ok, that makes more sense. Do you just one one usb for one end and the other for the last bit to do power injection? I’ve done that before, and it works fine, but sometimes I just like to have more amps even though I never end up running things super bright… I just am OCD about wanting to be able to run at full brightness just in case I ever have to… even though I never do… which makes me annoyed at myself for feeling like I need to.

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Extremely interesting since i’m working on a high drain wearable myself.
Would care to share a bit some details ?

  1. What happens if you increase luminosity until it drains more than the Powerbank can supply ? Depending of the solutions i’ve been using, either the powerbank cuts off (press the button to restart) or voltage falls. Both cases result in Pixelblaze rebooting, but then i’m stuck in an endless “reboot” since it reboots at the same “too high drain” luminosity unless I disconnect the LED manually and reduce the luminosity before reconnecting it
  2. How do you reduce power consumption when not in use ? A switch between the powerbank and the PB/LED ? Or simply disconnect the USB ?

Great job anyways, execution looks spotless.