I’ve finally (phew) mapped all the 1348 pixels on my jacket. They’re connected to an output expander, with somewhere between 120 to 220 pixels per output expander output.
I have a pattern I used to help doing the mapping, and it runs fine. Some other patterns run fine. But some don’t run at all. Notably “Spotlights/rotation 3d” and “Red-green 2d sweep” do, but “Spiral twirls 2d” and “Fast Pulse 2D/3D” don’t. I don’t see anything at all.
Even the patterns which do run are only getting low-teens FPS.
Am I hitting processor power/RAM limits with that many pixels? Or is power the issue? It’s not browning out and the wifi isn’t dying when I switch to a non-working pattern, it just doesn’t display anything.
Shouldn’t be, for those. It should just slow down.
Some patterns allocate multiple arrays per pixel and won’t work at larger pixel counts without modification.
Open them up in the editor. If there is an error, like memory, or something like that, it should show up there. Also double check for a matching render function.
Those patterns should have the right render functions and shouldn’t run out of memory.
Still, I’d open them in the editor and look for issues.
“Voronoi Mix 2D” is a good example of one that used to work when I only had the front panels (~700 pixels) and doesn’t work now. The editor seems fine; there’s no errors anywhere but also there’s no preview, and when it’s “running” (I can’t see anything on the jacket or the preview) it’s getting ~5fps. I guess the render functions are fine, I haven’t modified any of those.
Hm. I’d forgotten about the “Patterns” vs “Playlists” tab and when I switched back over to Playlists (where I’d previously curated the patterns I liked and modified them to work with my brightness control pot and next/previous buttons) they all worked.
I do still find some aspects of the Pixelblaze UI confusing. But I’m happy enough for now, and I’m in the position to start playing with mapping in 3D and vibe coding writing my own custom animations.