Trinket 3V and lots of neopixels

EL Wire/Tape/Panels, LEDs, pixels and strips, LCDs and TFTs, etc products from Adafruit

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
sokbok
 
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 12:15 am

Trinket 3V and lots of neopixels

Post by sokbok »

Hello beautiful forum family.

I have 120 neopixels connected to 2, 3.7V, 4.4Ah Lipos in parallel and a 3V Trinket.

When I write my code, and put pixel count at 90, everything works well. When I cross to 100 or the ideal
pixel count of 120, there is no light from the whole strip. My suspicion is that this is a signaling issue
as mentioned in the uber guide. Would a signaling boost solve this?

I also have a Trinket Pro 3V which I had hoped might resolve this, but I cant get it to upload any code.
It just keeps sending me errors that it could not locate the microcontroller. I tried 5 different micro USB cords.
Maybe they all lack a data line, but I doubt it. Any advice on that too??

3rd question. I want to run FASTLED code for neopixels and generally have a robust design for
wireless communication, and more advanced designs, whats the best controller for this? Trinket Pro 5V? Teensy?

thanks

User avatar
chemdoc77
 
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:32 am

Re: Trinket 3V and lots of neopixels

Post by chemdoc77 »

The problem that you are having with the Trinket is that you are running out of RAM.

As for the Trinket Pro, do you have the Arduino programmer in Tools set to USBtinyISP and do you have the correct board picked? If you are using Windows, can you see the USBtiny device in the Device Manager? This could be the problem and you should check your setup including the installation of the correct drivers.

I have been using FastLED for a while now. If I have 100 or less RGB leds then I use the Adafruit Metro Mini. Over 100 RGB leds, i.e. 256 RGB led matrix, or for certain very complex sketches that need a lot of RAM, I use the Teensy 3.2. My recent videos on my YouTube channel are made with the Metro Mini. See:

https://www.youtube.com/user/chemdoc77

Please note that the Teensy 3.5 and 3.6 are not yet supported by the latest version of FastLED.

For wireless communication using FastLED, I would recommend that you look at the work and code (especially the Tree v2 project) of Jason Coon at:

http://www.evilgeniuslabs.org

User avatar
sokbok
 
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 12:15 am

Re: Trinket 3V and lots of neopixels

Post by sokbok »

Thanks for the info. Very pertinent. In regards to the Trinket not responding, I have board and programmer set correctly.
It may be a bad micro USB cord or a bad Trinket. I jam SO MANY micro controllers into my laptop's USB that its a mess.

The metro looks like a great board and I will start using it. Having serial comm. is so helpful.

The Teensy line is one I have used in the past and enjoy. The new boards look amazing.

For the Tree V2 design, it seems he just used the WEMOS DI to do wifi and LED control with the logic shifter. Fairly cheap and cool.
I wonder the range of either the wifi or infrared? Any idea?

Thanks.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Glowy things (LCD, LED, TFT, EL) purchased at Adafruit”