WS2811 Pixel controller and software help

Our weekly LIVE video chat. Every Wednesday at 8pm ET!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
Potatoejoe
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2018 1:59 pm

WS2811 Pixel controller and software help

Post by Potatoejoe »

Help! I am trying to find a way to program some sort of controller to control a string of WS2811 Pixels. Please bear with me as I’m a complete newby at programming LED controllers. The massive amount of stuff on the web is overloading my brain! Hardware I’m fine, but software, not so much so. My age doesn’t help either! The canned controllers that I have gotten off the web are fine for other applications but not for this project. The programs I have looked at use "canned" scenes but I need to control the Pixels individually. I used one long string of 350 Pixels in an existing sign of a train and they are not necessarily in the proper order to animate the wheels correctly. I want them to look like all 8 wheels are turning. I am currently using an off the shelf controller with a canned scene but it's not correctly turning the wheels. They kind of look like they are turning but they really aren't. I have mapped out which Pixels would be what color and what intensities but I have yet to find software that I can use to control them individually. Basically, there are 3 scenes. There are only 3 white colors used in each scene. Bright white followed by ⅔ intensity white followed by ⅓ intensity white pretty much repeated pretty much all the way down the string. After a short pause the second scene shifts all the bulb colors forward one step. After a short pause it shifts them all one more step forward. It simply repeats these scenes over and over. The only hitch is that I have 2 larger wheels in the middle that will take a different order of colors. As long as I can create 3 scenes each with an individualized custom set of the 3 colors and rotating through the 3 scenes I’m happy. Do you have a controller and the software to animate the wheels the way I want?
Attachments
small wheel worksheet.jpg
small wheel worksheet.jpg (78 KiB) Viewed 1228 times

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88039
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: WS2811 Pixel controller and software help

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

The neopixel library works with just about any Arduino or compatible microcontroller. That gives you individual control over each pixel.
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neo ... e/overview

An Arduino UNO can handle up to about 500 pixels.

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

Return to “Ask an Engineer! VIDEO CHAT (closed)”