Haha, well obviously that would be excellent. A bit outside the budget however!
Only 60 thousand stars but costs only $149, so you get what you pay for… On a star by star price basis, a much better deal.
Regarding the LED pixel, what you could do is drill a 3mm hole all the way through the board then drill a larger hole about half of the way and fix the the LED pixel in this hole. The light will shine through the smaller hole giving the appearance of a fibre optic effect. Don’t know how well this would work its just an idea I came up with.
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Came across this:
It uses 3mm fiber optics, which are way bigger than the stars you want, but the idea is sound: print a 3D holder which aligns your fiber in a hole with the LEDs.
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Yes this is brilliant! The more I research the more I realize a 3D printer housing would be a perfect match. I have no access to a 3D printer or experience designing, but even this project you shared could work for my purposes, assuming it will work with a SK9822 strip
You can order 3d printed items, but honestly with printer prices sub $200, likely you’d pay for your own printer with just this project.
Most of the fiber bundles I’m seeing on Amazon are with units, it’s got a mount to hold the bundle mechanically right in front of the light source. You could easily replicate this with LEDs and PB, but depends on the size of the bundle I suspect.
Yeah you’re not wrong. I ordered a 3D printed motor housing for some telescope stuff I was doing, cost about 50$ CAD. If I do stuff like this even a few times over the next couple years I’d of paid for my own printer.
If I had a printer I could build something really custom, and it would work into the housing/mounting design and simplify things probably.
AliExpress has lots of mixed fiber bundles, a bit cheaper than Amazon.
It’s been awhile but here is an update
I did end up buying a 3D printer which was it’s own whole world of distractions.
Either way I finally got around to building my workable prototype. PixelBlaze is great and I’m loving the quality. I have a tiny bit of coding experience but nothing amazing. I would love even a little bit of direction towards creating a very subtle “twinkle” pattern with mostly white, a bit of yellow white, and small amount of light blue leds. I’ll keep playing around.
Here is the design. I’ll heat shrink and do proper wiring so I can just plug in the star panels while installing
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Thanks for sharing the pics! I love watching people’s projects make progress.
I’ve done a bit of work on twinkles. Here’s a few to get you started:
Twinkler on the Randomly reduced code golf
Twinkling Classic Xmas Strands.epe (13.7 KB)
Custom Sequences.epe (13.9 KB)
If you’re not that deep on PB code, it might be a little hard to pull out the right parts to adapt. From your description I couldn’t tell if you want some darkness in there too. Can you draw a diagram of what a great twinkle would like over time? For example:
What percentage of the time is each LED likely to be in each state: Off, white, warm white, light blue? And are you looking for slow, perceptible fades, or flashy sudden twinkles?
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This is amazing thank you!! This will definitely help me learn
What I picture in my head might not be correct/possible, but I am still learning!
I plan on having 6 panels, with 1 module each. The goal being a natural color star sky, with a subtle twinkle, and the Constellations standing out. Each Module will have 5 LEDs, with the 5th LED being a constellation. The constellations will be constant color, and constant brightness. LEDs 1-4(0-3?) will have a subtle twinkle, more of a slight dim and then brighter, never all the way off. With 2xLEDs being white, 1x yellow white, and 1x blue white.
Twinkle = A slight dim, then back to full brightness, randomly, and not in sync with the other LEDs.
Module: LED 1 = White with twinkle, LED 2 = White with twinkle, LED 3 = Yellow/White with twinkle, LED 4 = Blue/White twinkle, LED 5 = Constant white
Is any of this possible? Or am I overthinking it?
I don’t think you’re overthinking it! I have a tutorial for you that’s about 70% done - I’ll finish it after work today.
Amazing thank you! I’ve been playing around with the Christmas twinkle, but still working around how to understand the code.
Will each module be independent (it’s own PB), or are you connecting them together, so that you’ll have 6 “LED 1”, 6 “LED 2”, etc? Or do you expect all of the LED 1s to do the same thing?
Seems to me, that you’d be better off with them NOT doing the same exact twinkle, so, for example, all of the LED4s don’t twinkle the same blue at the same moment, but are offset a bit from each other.
If you do 6 PBs, you’d be all set, but wiring up all of the panels together (ie 30 leds) is well within the realm of reasonable for one PB to do all of it, assuming data lines will connect them all, of course.
Yes that is a good point, they will be linked in a line so 30 LEDs total on a single PB.
I agree about the twinkle, if they all twinkle at the same time it would ruin the illusion.
When I place the fibers they will be placed fairly randomly, with the idea to mix mostly white, some yellow white, and some blue white in. This will assist with the “twinkle” and contribute to looking more like a natural night sky. The constellations I’m thinking will look better as constant white, just so they stand out a bit.
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Ok, so 5 types of LEDs, cycling thru the types every 5 (one module) but for instance, the blues should twinkle at the same rate but not the same time.
Yeah that makes sense, essentially a 30 led strip, with a 5 led “pattern” that repeats.
@KRoach - I’ve written out a tutorial here in a separate thread so it’s more useful in search results.
Designing independent twinkles
Hope this helps!
Thanks a ton! I really appreciate the effort and assistance. I’ll play around with this
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Any updates on this? I am looking to create a DIY controller for about 1000 fiber optical threads for an upcoming home theatre celing project.
I want to be able to control it via Home Assistant. I have 6 panels in total and wanted to control them via esp module. Thinking maybe going the WLED + Quinled.
Do you have a video of everything working? Schematics of the hardware? List of components?