I am new to Pixelblaze and would like to know what I need to buy to start. I see there
Here is my project:
I have now an 8-ft diameter sphere with 92 vertices with traditional C9 holiday dumb lights at each vertex. Picture here has been uploaded. I also have a Raspberry PI and Windows 10 laptop. I am handy with wiring and know Ohm’s law.
I would like to convert this to a programmable set of lights– I can index them, giving each vertex a meaningful number for my programmer to control. Ideally I would have larger lights like C9, not mini lights. I am less interested in animation than I am in changing color and brightness via code. e.g. “change all bulbs to orange”, “change a list of bulbs to blink white”, etc. I have a very advanced programmer at my disposal– if he gets uncooperative I remind him I taught him to tie his shoes and use the toilet!
I see there are excellent tutorials here, but to learn I would like all hardware and software in place.
What do I buy?
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That looks great! I would get a few Pixelblazes and an expansion board. The Pro Expanders are very very handy. The 3d printed cases add protection and a nice way to mount them. The led matrixes can be helpful with mapping, the Mini Bucks are small and compact making it easier to power the PB’s(Pixelblazes) and the wiring adapters make it that much simpler. Whatever you end up grabbing, you’ll find a way to use it!
Thanks for the reply on what hardware I need to get started for my 92-bulb projec6t. WHy do you day “a few” Pixelblazes when I only need to control 92 bulbs (indesced)?
A single Pixelblaze will do fine for this job. It’s just nice to have a couple around, because there’s always something else to light up!
At a minimum along with the Pixelblaze, you’ll need addressable LED strings and power supply of appropriate voltage and amperage to power them. If you’re using 5v LEDs, you can use the power supply to power the Pixelblaze directly. If you’re using 12v or 24v LEDs, you’ll need a buck converter to step down the supply voltage to power the Pixelblaze.
If you want to stick with the “holiday” style lights, you could get LEDs of this sort.
They’re 12v, waterproof, and since it’s a single strand, the wiring is simple, although arranging them on your sphere may not be. (If you’re not familiar w/addressable LEDs, there’s a data wire that must be run continuously from the controller output to all the LEDs.)
This is where the output expander comes in. With 3D sculptural objects, it’s often a lot easier to wire your LEDs in a “star” topology - short strands connected to multiple outputs, rather than one long strand connected to a single output. The output expander gives you 8 outputs, which might make your wiring a lot more convenient.
So, the list of essentials goes like this:
- Pixelblaze
- Addressable LEDs
- Power supply w/voltage matching the LEDs
- Buck converter if you need 5v for the Pixelblaze from your power supply
- Output expander if you decide it’ll help with the wiring
- Extra wire, 2 conductor for just power, or 3 conductor if you need to mount the Pixelblaze away from the lights. Use big wire - not that 20ga stuff. You’ll see less voltage drop, and it’s physically stronger.
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Thanks for the “starter kit” list. That’s very helpfulI
Before I dive in with a purchase, I have a couple more questions:
Because I will sometimes be using white lights I am interested in benefits and problems with going with RGBW string. What issues might I face with RGBW for this 92 bulb string? Will sample code I get from this forum work almost identically whether I am going RGB or RGBW?
Because I am accustomed to dealing with the long string of lights for this sphere, I am inclined to go with indexed light “locations”. I can point to a bulb on the sphere now and give it a meaningful (to me) index number. Any severe issues with index?
BTW, I haven’t mentioned that my lighted sphere gets built and disassembled once per year. I’ve been doing that with dumb C9 light bulb strings for 20 years.
One of the best things about the Pixelblaze is that the pattern code generally works regardless of what kind of LED you run it on. And you can actually get reasonable whites out of RGB addressable LEDs. RGBW LEDs just makes it easier to pick a specific white color temperature. They also use less power while running all white if that’s a consideration.
On Pixelblaze, if you hook up a string of n LEDs, the first (nearest the controller) LED on the string has index 0, and the last LED has index n-1. You can also choose to provide a 1D, 2D or 3D coordinate map which makes it really easy and fun to write patterns specifically for your displays. ( But you always get index for free, and can use it as you like in code.
