Hi folks. I’ve been working on a new IDE (integrated development environment) for Pixelblaze. There have been some feature ideas kicking around in my head for several years, and I finally got time to commit them to code. I started with some modest goals, but the project snowballed and I ended up building out almost all of my wishlist features in the end:
- Develop, debug, run and save patterns (no controller needed)
- Connect to controller, run/save patterns and maps, change settings and patterns vars
- Code editor with syntax checking, autocomplete, hover help, and background compilation
- Bundled code libraries that can be called from and compiled into your code (aka tree-shaking)
- First-class maps that can be named and stored in your browser
- Bench test harness and performance tuning guide
- 30 new patterns, including ShaderToy ports
I won’t repeat the entire PXLBLZ Github repo README here - that’s the next level of detail about the project. You can also find the codebase and a technical reference to how the IDE is built if you’re curious.
But if you’re more like me, you’d probably stop reading at this point and just launch the IDE.
I’m open to any and all feedback, even if it’s just to tell me you’re using it. But I will also take bug reports, feature requests and I’m open to PRs.
It’s great to see that there’s still energy around Pixelblaze. Tarball posted an impressive pattern visualizer a couple of months ago and I’m hoping we see more folks continuing to add to the ecosystem.
Massive thanks to Ben Hencke for bringing this amazing little device into existence
