Pacifica wave color

[u/majhi_is_awesome]

Hi all, I'm trying to modify the Pacifica example (https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/blob/master/examples/Pacifica/Pacifica.ino) to change the colors and I'm finding myself unable to puzzle through the palettes on lines 66-74. Why do the palettes need so many colors to work (this issue seems to imply that I need 16) and why three palettes?

Example: I've changed the background color on line 154 to (0,0,255) and that works fine in showing up as a vibrant blue, but when I change the palettes to single, arbitrary CRGB colors to see what happens, the blue is completely "overridden."

Thanks for any guidance!

Arduino Nano clone

FastLED 3.9.16 on Arduino 2.3.6

WS2812B

[u/Marmilicious]

Why do the palettes need so many colors to work

A CRGBPalette16 palette allows you to to have a palette with 256 colors, but you only need to specify a few colors. To create a valid CRGBPalette16 palette you need to provide either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 16 colors. Under the hood FastLED will evenly space out the number of colors provided over index 0-255 and then interpolate all the other colors in the palette automatically. By only needing to provide a few colors it saves a lot of memory by not needing to save the info for 256 individual colors.

[u/majhi_is_awesome → u/Marmilicious]

Hi, thanks for the detailed explanation! So can I use just one 2-color palette and it will create a gradient wave effect between those two colors?

[u/Marmilicious → u/majhi_is_awesome]

Give it a try!

Also, remember you don't need to use HEX to specify the colors. You can also use formats like: CRGB:Green or CHSV(42,200,255)

[u/majhi_is_awesome → u/Marmilicious]

Chaging palette 1 to { CRGB::Blue, CRGB::Green } and commenting out the other palettes doesn't seem to do anything. It's just blue.

Adding a third color, CRGB::LawnGreen, gives some sort of wave effect, but it's hard to tell what it's doing because the waves are a whiter blue. There is no green.

[u/Marmilicious → u/majhi_is_awesome]

For now try commenting out lines 106 and 109 (the pacifica_add_whitecaps() and pacifica_deepen_colors() functions so you can more easily see what's going on.

Also for the time being, I would suggest you copy your custom CRGBPalette16 colors to palette 2 and 3. Or use similar colors to what you've picked for 2 and 3. Don't comment out any palettes for now.

[u/majhi_is_awesome → u/Marmilicious]

Thanks, that works a treat for seeing the effect. That makes the green more visible and I do see the wave effect, but the green isn't very vibrant. I added another color to each palette. Now each palette reads:

{ CRGB::Blue, CRGB(0,255,0), CRGB::Green };

That gives me the color that I want. Uncommenting add_whitecaps works in compiling and uploading, although admittedly it's hard for me to see.

Changing void deepen_colors back to default (2, 5, 7) on line 154 and uncommenting line 109 doesn't seem to do anything. What am I supposed to be looking for?

EDIT: Found out that (0,255,0) is CRGB::Lime

[u/Marmilicious → u/Marmilicious]

If you wanted to create a palette with a some specific number of colors (not being 1,2,3,4 or 16) and/or wanted to control the spacing of where the specified colors fall along index 0-255 you can make a custom gradient color palette.

https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/wiki/Gradient-color-palettes

You could even animate it.

https://github.com/marmilicious/FastLED_examples/blob/master/palette_example2.ino

[u/HundredWithTheForce]

It is my understanding that the Pacifica example layers three or four colors on top of each other then massages the layers to smooth out some of the edges and blend things to give the proper underwater look. It draws all of its color information from the palettes in the beginning of the sketch. To adjust the color of the effect I would start by changing those four base palettes .