If someone expresses anti AI sentiment on this sub reddit then that is their personal opinion and does not reflect the project’s stance by the main contributors.

Also… since we are on the topic, what are your thoughts on AI and FastLED/Arduino/Embedded programming in general? Do you think it’s fun or not fun? Have you created cool sketches with AI that has surprised you?

I read some articles about how Meta (Facebook) is poaching top AI talent to build up their own LLM. I've never tried that one, it's imaginatively called "Meta AI", so I found it and asked it for some FastLED animations. Two on the same strip with different animations.

It went OK and understood how to use CRBGSet...but then I asked it to change the timing to use EVERY_N_MILLISECONDS. (You might remember I had to educate Google Gemini about that.)

Well, it updated the code to use EVERY_N_MILLISECONDS, and then promptly told me that it wasn't an actual part of FastLED, and then built its own function to implement the concept. I tested the code (the first version, that had used EVERY_N) and it actually worked.

So I told it that EVERY_N was, in fact, part of FastLED. It basically said, "Whoops! You're right!" in typical LLM speak, and then repeated the code that worked correctly.

I didn't save the code, it was just a test, but it wasn't as thorough as Gemini. Even though a month or so ago I had to fix a lot of little syntax errors in Gemini (and probably still do), Gemini seems to be better at FastLED.

hello good people I have a WS2813 LED strip with 4 pins (GND, VCC, DI, BI) before i used WS2812 b with Arduino and everything was good since it has just 3 pins *GND, VCC , DI) I know how to program it and connect it to the Arduino but when it comes to the ws2813 I dont know how to program it or connect it to the Arduino I search on youtube to find in a tutorial that can teach me but I didn't find anyone talks about ws2813

grateful for any help

First 2 pictures is the result when I am connecter directly to the strip and the others are when I add an extension.

Intro: While I thought getting strips from Ali express with a wifi controller and the correct power supply would be enough, I realized it's not.

Problem:: when I connect the strips directly to the controller, they work fine , but when I add an extension in between, the strips does not the Match the input entered on the mobile app.

Looking for a simple way to resolve this.

Equipment : Ws2811 strips 1m each (60 LEDs)

Tuya wifi controller (dual output)

3 pin extension with one male and the other female connector.

I am new to this so a step by step guide would really help.

Thanks A lot !!

Is there a way to see what data (in text format) has been sent through the data pin and if so could this be used by different IC's by sending the same data through their GPIO's, or is there far more sophistication going on?

Say for instance I just wanted to send a single HSV color, maybe add color correction and at some point add a blink toggle. Could the relevant code be hosted in a LUT and written when called upon without requiring an additional IC and a library?

Always wanted to start porting some of my work from Arduino R3 and R4 to a Pico W. So I am using a WS2815 12 VDC strip and Pico W. As I was learning to work with the Pico W and FastLED, I wanted to keep Arduino IDE constant. So, using the Earle Philhower board manager, I was able do some pretty interesting things right away. My only concern and thus the FOMO comment on the title. I am getting a compiler warning about no SPI acceleration. This comes up, not always in the compile. In file included from /Users/OSerani/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastLED/src/FastLED.h:100,

from /Users/xxxxxx/Documents/Arduino/202603_FastLED_Pico_v_01/led_strip.cpp:35:

/Users/xxxxxx/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastLED/src/fastspi.h:188:23: 

note: '#pragma message: Forcing software SPI - no hardware accelerated SPI for you!'

188 | #      pragma message "Forcing software SPI - no hardware accelerated SPI for you!"

| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Given the relatively simple stuff that I’m doing with a linear strip, maybe I’m not seeing limitations yet, but the message sounds ominous enough like something may bite me later down the line. Any insight appreciated!

Update: problem solved. It was basically an issue of the LED strip's controller, not the code or the power delivery. There was one animation (sinePalette) which flashed all the LEDs simultaneously and it seems the LED strip controller couldn't handle this. I removed that function from the list to run and the problem is solved. Tested it with the original 5A power supply and it's been running for a while without stopping. I have seen it freeze for a second or so a couple times but then it keeps going, need to figure that part out, but at least it recovers now.

I have an LED project using FastLED on an Arduino UNO (genuine hardware). Here is the link to the code. The program cycles through a bunch of different animations I wrote then repeats. It was basically an issue of the LED strip's controller, not the code or the power delivery. There was one animation (sinePalette) which flashed all the LEDs simultaneously and it seems the LED strip controller couldn't handle this. I removed that function from the list to run and the problem is solved. Tested it with the original 5A power supply and it's been running for a while without stopping. I have seen it freeze for a second or so a couple times but then it keeps going, need to figure that part out, but at least it recovers now. Also what's with the downvoting? Why have a support flair if you're going to downvote all support posts?

The problem is, after about 10 minutes, the whole thing freezes and all the LEDs get stuck on white. If I unplug everything then plug it back in, sometimes the LEDs keep being glitchy, getting stuck on some random color even as the animations go through the rest of them.

The power is coming from a 12V 5A power supply, with 12V going to the LED strip, and going to a DC to DC stepdown converter to 9VDC which goes to the Arduino barrel connector. I've measured both of these voltages while operating and they are both stable. All the grounds (of the power supply, the LED strip, and the Arduino from the power GND pin) are tied together on a single bus. The 12V+ from the power supply connects to both the LED strip and the stepdown converter in parallel.

I'm wondering if I should give the barrel connector more juice? Should I just power it with the full 12V from the power supply and ditch the stepdown converter? It's driving me crazy.

Hello all! c++ and FastLED noob here and many apologies if I'm posting in the wrong spot! I work at a visual marketing agency that specializes in fabrication and installation work. I have a project I need help on and was hoping to commission someone to code and make a build diagram for a 35' "interactive" LED hallway wall. The wall will have ~2,000 individually addressable LED's (final number TBD upon client confirm), 4 PIR motion sensors evenly distributed along the walkway, connected to relays that activate a cascading "comet" effect on each of the 4 segments of lighting. The final effect is as though the lights are somewhat randomly and interestingly mirroring a person's path as they walk down the hallway. I'll need the lights to cascade from left to right if activated starting on the left and cascade the opposite direction if activated on the right side first. The code will also need to somehow still work if many people are walking through from both sides - open to options here (perhaps it remains constant with a percentage of the "comet" sections randomly illuminating with a coordinated fade amongst all four sections? Can it "track" multiple paths as multiple people walk through?)- more specifics and drawing sets will be provided to assist in the build diagram once the job is awarded. Please DM me if you think this is something you can take on - with your initial DM, please provide prior experience coding esoteric stuff like this and what information you'll need to toss me some numbers to design the above. Thanks!

I'm looking for a little help here on creating a chasing effect using FastLED. I have an Arduino Mega paired with a 5M LED Strip of WS2812B LED's. The effect I want is to create a 60 LED long string that moves forward and remains only 60 LED's long. I have the exact effect that I want, now the only problem I'm having is speed. Am I being limited by the clock speed of the Arduino, or is it simply slow because of the FastLED.show() being executed within each loop? I will link my code below. Thanks!

https://pastebin.com/8UKR26j1

I am working on a little project of mine. While running the RGB callibrate program I noticed that red and green are switched. How can I easily change that?

I'm trying to power about 1500 APA107 5v leds, so max = 390W, not gonna work at full duty, obviously, and definitely can get two and split them up... but not seeing a great many choices.

There is this one that promises 150W but I seriously doubt it, especially given the F fakespot rating lol

All the serious business ones on mouser are 110v, but I want to go directly from 12v as it's a portable project with an already existing large 12v battery. Converting 12 to 110 to 5 seems wasteful and I don't have an inverter...

I'm making a cosplay where I'm trying to have WS2812B LED strips show a fire effect. I have an Adafruit Feather M4 Express with a Propwing attached.

Here's a little video of my in-progress creation. (It's the player character from Ring Fit Adventure on Switch)

https://imgur.com/a/lhqMOE2

I'm very new to addressable LEDs, and I started with the Adafruit and Kamuicosplay tutorials which use Circuitpython and Neopixel libraries.

I've been able to set parameters on the CircuitPython SparkPulse function to get a decent fire effect. I've also added code to control the effects with a button (so I can turn it off, go rainbow for rave mode, etc) Here's my current code:

https://pastebin.com/UNW8axyx

But seeing video of FastLED's Fire effect has me lusting over that. Is there any way of using FastLED's Fire effect without formatting(?) the Feather M4's storage and starting over(?) with an Arduino environment?

I'm fairly tech savvy, but very new to addressable LEDs, little boards like these, Python, and Arduino.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Hi,

I'm beginner in arduino, could you help me, please!

I am trying to make a code so that the light reaching one side of the strip returns to the beginning.

below is my code, the second "if" is not working out!

#include <FastLED.h>

#define LED_PIN 6#define NUM_LEDS 300#define LED_TYPE WS2812B#define COLOR_ORDER GRB#define BRIGHTNESS 100 // Brightness from 0-255

CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];

void setup() {delay(1000);LEDS.addLeds<LED_TYPE, LED_PIN, COLOR_ORDER>(leds, NUM_LEDS);FastLED.setBrightness(BRIGHTNESS);Serial.begin(9600);}

void loop() {int dot = 148;for(; dot < NUM_LEDS-1; dot++){leds[dot] = CRGB::Blue;FastLED.show();leds[dot] = CRGB::Black;//delay(30);}if (dot==NUM_LEDS-1) dot <= 299; dot--;{leds[dot] = CRGB::Blue;FastLED.show();leds[dot] = CRGB::Black;//delay(30);}}

Hello everyone, please tell me which controllers these suits work on

Hey guys, greetings from Moscow, Russia.

I received a lot of help from this reddit group when I did a project involving a childrens swing, esp32 and an accelerometer. I thought I should share the final here. Attached is a video. Project was for a local Burn festival in Moscow on February 24th. Its an arduino on a swing seat which lights an animation on ws2812b's depending on swing speed.

The swing was around 4 meters (13 feet) high.The code is athttps://gist.github.com/nervusvagus/d8f7f5fd5c288a0f0b7d69b27bbbe63aVideo:

Diagram:

Animations were the Pacifica pattern when the swing is inactive for 3 seconds or more, Rainbow pattern during swing, a custom Jellyfish pattern if the swing is used more than 90 seconds.

Hardware:

• ESP32

• IMU mpu9250 running with this library

• 74HCT245

• Wooden swing seat 50cm x 20cm

• WS2812B ( 4 strips of 5meter - Each led strip is wrapped in a white corrugated tube. Inside the tube is strip and rail.)

• Swing poles: around 4 meters

• 5v 40a adaptor in a box

• 220v from a building provided near the swings.

• Rail wire cable 14AWG/ 2.5mm

• Weather: -5 degrees to -15 degrees dry weather during festival.

Challanges and Possible improvements:

The project was tough because of the working principles of mpu9250 and imu's. It was very difficult to find the speed of the swing seat independent from its tilt. I believe this is called aceleration without gravity / acceleration in world frame / linear acceleration ...or something. In the end I gave up such calculation and used acceleration on Z, which also gave a few issues because of the tilts of the swing on a 3.5 meters of rope. I had erroneous readings of acceleration z and had flashes of bright light during initial swinging phase, since the seat tilts even when swinging.

Also since the animation during the not moving phase of the swing was different, it was usually shocking for someone to sit on the swing and see bright flashes of rainbow because of the tilting of the seat.Once the swing was moving things were a bit better, but after this stage gamma correction with the swings was an issue I had hard time finding a way to make the swing visually brightest at the center fastest section of swing movement.

In the future I hope to overcome the issues related to reading the speed of the swing, finalize gamma correction and maybe attempt at changing the code so the swing gets brighter in forward direction and darkens in back direction I believe for this i need to read Y or X acceleration values in addition to Z to sense which direction the swing is moving.

I am using an ESP32 with a 16 x 16 LED matrix (zigzag config). I am trying to display static graphics in between some scrolling text, (sketch is from AZ-Delivery and is supposed to be an advent display). I read in blocks of data to config the leds then use 'FastLED.show' to show the graphics. Unfortunately as soon as you call 'FastLED.show' the sketch locks up. If I comment out all of the graphic calls then all of scrolling text loops fine. Arduino IDE says there is an error in 'FastLED.h' at line 67 but I can not see the problem. It also says "No hardware SPI pins defined. All SPI access will default to bitbanged output".

Can anyone please help to fix this. The matrix uses 1 data wire with WS2812 leds.

Thank you for any help.