Adalight Project Questions

[MTBiker]

Hi, love your tutorial on the Adalight project and have a few questions.

I have a 55" LED TV and was thinking 1 strand of LEDs would not be enough, is it easy to connect 2 strands and configure them? Besides another stand is there another other hardware I need to get?

Can Adalight be controlled with atmoWin? I'm running MediaPortal and there is an atmoWin plugin I was hoping to use, if not do you know of any other MediaPortal plugins that would be compatiable?

Thanks in advance.

[pburgess]

Hi there!

Joining two strands is definitely possible. You'll need to tweak the Processing sketch for this...hopefully the comments are sufficiently verbose, or I think I may have walked someone through this on the forums before. No changes are required in the Arduino code.

You might want a larger power supply for two strands. Though the average current use will be under 2 amps, particularly bright scenes may push this over the 2A rating of the power supply. It's probably OK for very short intervals, but I wouldn't recommend it if bright scenes might linger. (If anyone has experience to the contrary, please chime in!) We'll have larger 5V supplies in the future.

Adalight doesn't work with Atmowin "out of the box." It sounds like this might require just a config file change, but I'm just not familiar with that particular software yet.

[HugeJean]

Hi All!

Just a heads up, I just finished putting my first Adalight/Arduino/Proccessing project together yesterday.
Ive attached it all to a 40" LCD using the panel's viewable screen dimensions as a tempelate to mount the LEDS.

A single strand of 25 LED's JUST made it around, with the strands being just a little tighter than I would have prefered.
I had to cut and extend a few to negotiate the bulky wall mount I have.

Other than that, fantastic project!

Good luck with your build!

[garrettwp]

Sorry for jacking the thread. I just placed an order for a adalight kit and an arduino mega. I am starting off to test to make sure this will work for a my setup. My plan is to string up 4 strands around my projection screen in my home theater room. I read somewhere that the adruino mega would be needed if stringing a large amount of leds. Was this the correct choice? What would be the best way to power 4 strands? Would I have to go the route of using a pc power supply?

- Garrett

[pburgess]

Hi Garrett,

While Adalight should work fine with the Arduino Mega, there's nothing to be gained there in terms of features or performance vs. a simpler Arduino board. If you want to build other projects down the line, the Mega has extra I/O and program memory, but none of this is used by Adalight.

As for power...if you already have a spare PC power supply lying around, then this might be an acceptable temporary solution. Later on we'll have some beefy 5V laptop-style power bricks available in the store...silent and much smaller.

[garrettwp]

So the Arduino Uno would have sufficed with using about 4 strands (100 leds)? I read somewhere in another thread that the more led's, it would require an Arduino with more memory and it was recommended to use the mega. This will be installed around my projection screen which is 110 inches in diameter.

- Garrett

[pburgess]

The Uno will suffice. As noted in the tutorial, even really old Arduinos with just 1K RAM will do...Adalight is not a memory-constrained application.

RAM will only be an issue for standalone Arduino programs (those where a host PC isn't doing all the processing) in conjunction with hundreds of LEDs.

[garrettwp]

Thank you for the info. I guess I over spent a little when ordering the Arduino Mega. I also ordered a teensy and will find another project for the Mega.

- Garrett

[Suven]

You might want a larger power supply for two strands. Though the average current use will be under 2 amps, particularly bright scenes may push this over the 2A rating of the power supply. It's probably OK for very short intervals, but I wouldn't recommend it if bright scenes might linger.

Hi,

what do you mean by you would not recommended? Is it just less "beautiful" or may I damage the Adruino/LEDs if I try it anyway?

[pburgess]

what do you mean by you would not recommended

At best (and the most likely), the color of the LEDs will simply be "off" (what should be white will instead be brown-ish). At worst, the power supply might overheat and trip its fuse. The Arduino and LEDs won't be damaged, but having to replace the power supply does put a damper on the fun.