New to this and wanting to learn

Patterns and Code
1

I’m completely new to writing code but wanted to know if writing a code that was breathing would be possible?

I’m doing a cosplay project and I need a glowing pulse or breathing look in the colors yellow and gold. I was hope that someone could point me in the right direction on learning the code to do so.

2

Hi @Sage,
Absolutely! There are a bunch of ways to do this. Also, be sure to check out the Pixelblaze Academy of Wizardry and Enchantment - ElectroMage Forum for excellent learning material!

There’s a pattern included on V3 that walks you though a ton of coding and pattern concepts. Look for “An Intro to Pixelblaze Code” on your Pixelblaze, or upload this file in the editor:
An Intro to Pixelblaze Code.epe (22.0 KB)

The core animation concepts in Pixelblaze are based around a handful of functions that generate waveforms (or transform them).

waveforms
waveforms1200×1025 92.5 KB

(source: Waveform - Wikipedia)

For colors, you can use either RGB color space or HSV. A hue around 0.05 will be yellow/orange on many LEDs, feel free to try other values to get what you are looking for.

Try pasting each of these small patterns in your editor. Play around with the values!

The first thing you’d start out with is time(n) where n is some interval, and this generates a value between 0 and 1, then looping back to 0 abruptly. It looks like a sawtooth if you plotted it out. A value of 1 cycles about every 65 seconds, so a value of 0.1 would give you about 6.5 seconds. Give it a try, this will cycle every 2 seconds:

export function render(index) {
  v = time(2 / 65.536)
  hsv(.05, 1, v)
}

sawtooth

For a breathing effect, the sawtooth doesn’t really do the trick at all. A triangle waveform could work, but would kind of snap/bounce at the lows and highs. To give it a try, wrap time with triangle():

export function render(index) {
  v = triangle(time(2 / 65.536))
  hsv(.05, 1, v)
}

triangle

To give it a smoother appearance, one that lingers a bit at the highs and lows, a sine wave might look more natural. For that, we can use wave():

export function render(index) {
  v = wave(time(2 / 65.536))
  hsv(.05, 1, v)
}

wave

To me, that looks like a typical breathing effect. It may seem to favor brighter values, and this has to do with how we perceive light. To give it a better look we can square or cube the value.

export function render(index) {
  v = wave(time(2 / 65.536))
  v = v*v
  hsv(.05, 1, v)
}

wavesq

One thing to note is that since we didn’t use index or any variable that changes from pixel to pixel, this will make the entire strip do the same thing, which is what I think you are looking for. If you wanted a traveling pulse however, offset time by a fractional amount based on the pixel location like index/pixelCount.

export function render(index) {
  v = wave(time(2 / 65.536) + index / pixelCount)
  v = v*v
  hsv(.05, 1, v)
}

waveoffset

And in this pattern you start to see some concepts that are shared with many of the patterns in Pixelblaze!

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3

We recently did a Heartbeat task but not a breathing one. I’ll add it to the potential effects for future tasks, but Wizard’s code is a good start.

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Working through that “intro to PB code” has been a huge help for me in getting the process figured out, figuring out syntax, etc. That’s a great place to start, preferably on a laptop so you can more easily use the code editor. Not so easy on a phone screen…

3 Likes
5

Yea, I’ll take a look. Thank you!!

6

Omg, I have been trying to buckle down and do something simple and I’m just amazing at how cool and easy you did this

Sorry, I’m bad at coding so this is like all types of cool to me

7

Please consider this reply as not just to you, but all of the folks who get a PB and feel a bit overwhelmed by it all:

You’ll get better. It takes practice, it takes learning, and experience.

I began the Tasks as a way to inspire people. I pondering doing a Coding 101 and realized that there are plenty of coding 101s and resources out there. And that I didn’t have the energy or desire to add to that pile. What I wanted, and with 15 tasks and counting, coupled with some beautiful “answers” by those who have spent time and energy in practice and experience, is hopefully encouraged others to spend their energy on learning, to join us.

You can do it. Build on the shoulders of those who came before you. Start small, and think big.
Every one of us, even the most experienced, is learning stuff every day, and improving our skills and understandings, and the cool patterns that have been created are just the beginning.

1 Like