Pixelblaze currently renders continuously. At some point I think an API to skip animation frames would make sense. This comes up infrequently and it hasn’t become top of list.
Right now the best ways to do something like this is to buffer what the pixels will show (like in an array), only updating the pixels when you want the animation to change, or basing the animation on some variable that you control and intermittently update as you want the animation to progress. What you have above is an example of that.
These previous discussions might be helpful:
- Previous post on stoping animation: Stop Frame Function
- Stop motion tool: GitHub - thijsc/dragonblaze: Tool to use RGB led strips in your stop motion projects (see the PB pattern in the readme) related post: Dragonblaze: Use RGB leds in stop motion films