π
2025-01-17 01:01
in Arduino, Electronics, Linuxha
got a few extra colorful yard lights ;)
To debug some early issues I had with the pixelblaze, I soldered a few extra wires to add serial monitoring:
the serial port is temporarily going to a rPi3a which in turn makes it available over an ssh connection
up left if the pixelblaze pro expansion board that gives 8 channels, handles power distribution and converts the 12V to 5V for the pixelblaze itself
For the pixels, I picked rolls of 1000 pixels at 5cm and 10cm pitch from Ray Wu, trusted seller of blinky stuff, and one bonus of not doing this installation a few years earlier is that new pixels have been designed: WS2818.
WS2813 were a improvement for having a backup data line but still running on 5V which would have clear voltage drop issues.
WS2815 are the 12V version, which is good for dealing with voltage drop
WS2818 is yet another improvement over WS2815, still 12V with a backup data line, but more reliable and efficient
The last bit "more efficient" actually worked to my advantage as I was able to make a string with 600 pixels and not have to re-inject power anywhere. I measured line voltage at the end and it was only 5V but the pixels still worked great at the reduced voltage.
The advice I got on the leds are awesome group was to try hot glue, and it was a good idea. Thankfully I had a battery powered hot glue gun, which was a must have. The other important bit was a solder reflow hot air gun, which did have to be plugged in the few times I had to unglue strips to move them after I found a better routing or visual pattern:
And in all, I actually need 3 tools, the 3rd one was a battery operated air can replacement which allowed me to blow cold air on the hot glue points and have them dry in 10 to 15 seconds instead of 1mn. That was a lifesaver:
After laying strips, house looked like this:
After the first 2 days of work, I had 4 strips, around 1500 LEDs:
or on youtube:
But it really got better once I added 2 more strips and upp'ed the count to 2000, which was a lot more visually pleasing:
