Power on/off control

Feature Ideas + Requests
1

I’m installing RGB LED light strings on my house. I am using a 36V power supply as the main power run with 5V buck converters along the string. Since I won’t have the lights on very often, I would like to power off the 36V supply when not running the LEDs. How about a power button in the web UI that drives a digital output pin that I can use to turn the 36V supply on and off? Of course I’ll be powering the PixelBlaze from an AC mains to 5V adapter so the PB is always powered.

2

It’s not a global power button, but I just wanted to point out you can do this with the UI Sliders that you can make in any individual pattern:

Pixelblaze 2020-06-17 22-46-37
Pixelblaze 2020-06-17 22-46-37940×508 27.2 KB 

power36Vpin = 4 // Pin 4 is GPIO16 - a pad on the underside. 
                // https://github.com/simap/pixelblaze/blob/master/schematic.pdf
                    
// On a reboot, default to lights off. Have to load this interface to turn lights on.
power36Vctrl = 0

pinMode(power36Vpin, OUTPUT)
digitalWrite(power36Vpin, power36Vctrl)

export function sliderPower(x) {
  power36Vctrl = (x > 0.5) // Assumes pin goes high to enable 36V supply
  digitalWrite(power36Vpin, power36Vctrl) 
}

export function beforeRender(delta) {
  t1 = time(.1)
}

export function render(index) {
  h = t1 + index/pixelCount
  hsv(h, 1, power36Vctrl) // Slider also turns on this example pattern
}
2 Likes
3

@jeff that’s slick. I’d still like an on/off button up top, but this will do for now. Thanks.

4

BTW, WLED supports a power on/off relay - https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/wiki/Control-a-relay-with-WLED