Sandwiching PB V3 to it's expansion board

Troubleshooting
#1

Hello, it’s been quite a while since I’ve worked on my project with Pixelblaze, but I just got my V3 plus expansion board and I had a couple questions before I go and solder them together. So, when you stack them together as pictured in the guide, the headers are supposed to line up directly. The important ones being GND, 3v3, and TX. Correct? Well on the Pixelblaze V3 the outputs go:
GND, RST, 3v3, RX, TX…
But then on the exp. board the inputs go:
GND, (space), 3v3, TX…
So if i directly set one on top of the other the RX from the Pixelblaze would be routed to the TX on the exp. board.
Is that correct or am I missing something?

2nd question. The guide says “Be sure to power the sensor board with 3.3 V - it’s not 5 V tolerant.”
Does the Pixelblaze take care of stepping down voltage from 5v to 3.3v? Or do I have to somehow power it separately? Just don’t wanna blow it up!

Thanks in advance, I have hopes of getting my project at least mostly up and on display by May. Can’t wait to post some videos of it. Also I’m really excited to work with V3, very thankful to Ben and anyone else that help make this awesome little controller, and for listening to the community and adding some really cool new features!

#2

Hi @FantasticMrFox
Yes that is right! The TX from the Sensor board goes to the RX of Pixelblaze. Tx = transmit, and rx = receive.

You don’t have to worry about having the wrong voltage if you connect the Sensor Board to Pixelblaze like that (and thus power it from Pixelblaze’s 3.3V), only if you had powered it separately for some reason.

#3

Awesome. Thanks Ben!

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#4

While I’ve got you here I have another quick question that might take a bit more explanation or a deeper dive than I have time to type out right now but I’m gonna do my best to describe what I mean.
So I have a PB v.2.7 and I always liked using it to run the “random patterns” or cycle through presets setting that it has. I’d have to delete anything I didn’t want in there completely out of my bank of saved patterns so I would only have my favorite presets running in the cycle. The new Playlist function has fixed that (thank you BTW) But when I used to use the V2 running the “just cycle through presets at x amount of time” option, they would like seamlessly fade from one scene to the next, sometimes doing things that i’d never even seen before, creating really awesome blends of the patterns as they would cycle. I noticed in the V3 playlist, it kinda just abruptly switches to the next preset. Is there a way to make happen what used to happen with the V2 in the playlist of the V3? I’ll get my v2 hooked back up and take a video of what i mean as soon as i can, but i was curious why it’s acting differently.

#5

Hi @FantasticMrFox ,
I haven’t added anything like the smooth fading you describe yet (now or in the past). I think it was a lucky coincidence with the timing! That kind of thing is definitely planned for the future though.

There is a cross-fade pattern that might do what you are looking for. It blends separate patterns together with a cool shimmer-fade effect.

Shimmer Crossfade 2D.epe (14.6 KB)

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#6

I figured that something in the way that it cycled through patterns in the V2 that was making it do what I’m describing. Like it would make patterns I’d never even seen before then just perfectly go to lets say “blink fade” and then blink fade would get even more complicated and awesome, then it would seamlessly move to sparks, and then so on. I have no idea what it was doing or how it happened. I’ll get a video of what i mean when i get a min, and compare the two versions. maybe it was just blind luck that i had picked scenes that merged seamlessly together. but i swear there was some magic going on in there that was making patterens that weren’t in the code.

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