WLED on Pixelblaze?

Troubleshooting
#1

I know I might step into blasphemy territory here, but please hear me out!

I absolute love the Pixelblaze hardware!
So compact, and so easy to set up.
Sensor board and output expander works flawlessly.

That being said, I suck at Javascript! :smiley:
(A lot of you will recommend that I start practicing my coding, and I am learning slowly)

So I was wondering, if it was possible to use this amazing hardware and all of it’s features, and run something like WLED on it?

Hopefully this question is alright!
I am not here to talk bad about the Pixelblaze software!!!
But I just figured that for this project, WLED fits my need a bit better.

#2

Hi @Madsmaten,
You can definitely use PB as a generic ESP32 board, though you’ll need a USB serial adapter to load a new firmware. Thats much easier on the Standard than it is on the Pico. Getting the Expander and Sensor board working with WLED might be a bit more work, I don’t know of support out of the box, so to speak.

BTW you don’t have to know JS to load most patterns, one of the design goals of Pixelblaze has been to make pattern code more or less universal so that they can run without much if any modification on different physical installs.

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#3

I would need this one, right?

Also, is there any backup solution in terms of the PixelBlaze software?
Or is it gone, once you flash the ESP?

I understand that it was the purpose to make it easy to use.
And it is really nice!

But for this project, I will have several people controlling the lights, and I find WLED easier for that.
You have the color wheel, and can easily change patterns, tempo and settings with your own colors etc.

#4

@madsmaten, if you’ve already got a USB-serial adapter that you use for programming, you can probably use it. If you don’t have one, the Electromage programmer has the advantages of being reliable, compact and inexpensive.

You can use esptool to back up and restore your Pixelblaze. I do this all the time, as I am prone to somewhat hazardous experimentation. The relevant commands are:

Save flash:
esptool.py --baud 115200 --port <port name> read_flash 0x0 0x400000 filename.bin

Restore flash:
esptool.py --baud 115200 --port <port name> write_flash 0x0 filename.bin

(Edit: fixed commands, which were partially eaten by the forum’s markdown formatter. Doh – I know better.)

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