I didn’t do any fancy calculations at this point. As the strings are only 5V voltage drop is a big issue. The next step was to figure out how to power the LEDs and more importantly how to overcome the Voltage drop along the cables. As the maximum limit of the ESPixel controllers is 512, I’ve divided the grid into 4, meaning each controller is configured for 156 Pixels (468 Channels). So the total Pixel dimensions is 13 High x 48 Wide Giving a total of 624 Pixels.Įach pixel requires 3 data ‘channels’ (Red,Green,Blue) meaning a total of 1872 Data channels are needed. This entry was posted in Electronics and tagged 2017, Christmas, Controller, electronics, ESP, ESP01, ESP8266, ESPixelStick, LED, LED strip, Light Show 2017, Lights, NodeMcu, Pixels, Vixen, WiFi, WS2811, WS2812, Xmas, Xmas Lights 2017 on Septemby admin. The next job was to design and print some waterproof enclosures for them you can read about where i got the design in my other post. This seems to work pretty reliably so far. This is the max rated input voltage for the esp and increases the data line voltage slightly. In the end i replaced the 3.3v regulator with 3.6v instead. So i can only assume that the WS2812 LEDs and the WS2811 strings are not compatible? If i added another WS2812 LED that also worked fine. The individual led worked fine but not the string connected after it. In the mean time, connecting it directly to the 3.3v data from the ESP seems to work fine.įirst thing to note – don’t bother getting white boards! I though white would be cool as it’s a bit different and almost christmasy… Except you can barely see the traces which is actually rather annoying in an test/development situation! I soldered the components on including the WS2812 LED as mentioned in the Hackaday post but it wasn’t working. Hopefully i can make a WS2812 fit on the PCB that’s already being manufactured… I haven’t come up with a sleek method to shift the 3.3v up, but i did come across this post on HackADay, which will do the trick. After a bit of testing / googling it turns out that the Generic Level Shifters don’t switch fast enough for the data. This would allow me to program and test the ESP modules in advance. Whilst waiting for the boards to be made, i put a prototype together. I managed to squash it into 2.5x5cm so i can fit two of them into the 5x5cm limit board size. I was in a bit of a rush to get this done fairly soon as it can take a few weeks to receive them, still great value for money. Knowing i was going too need a few of these, i designed a PCB and sent it off to DirtyPCBs to get them made. Knowing it was all now working as planned, i drafted up a schematic… A 10K pullup resistor on the data line of the Led strip seemed to fix the issue. I was getting strange erratic results from the LED strip. ![]() Configuring the ESP via the web interface was easy enough. Having the software side looking promising i programmed a NodeMCU board with the firmware and wired up a Pixel RGB LED Strip. I highly recommend checking out the ESPixelStick GitHub if you plan on building any ESP based lighting controllers. The only thing i had to edit in the code was my access point credentials. I’ll be able to upload the firmware to the ESP and then do all the configuration through it’s web interface. I came across the ESPixelStick project which is perfect. I did a quick search online for an overall diagram of system but couldn’t find anything, so i came up with this. With the ESP8266 being my personal favorite ‘WiFi enabled’ Micro-controller, a quick google discovered that others had already done exactly what i have set out to achieve with regards to the controller. My original plan was to use RS485 Serial connection to send the data around to the controllers as i know this is how people have done it in the past, i also have a little experience with RS485 / Serial so there would be less of a learning curve.Īfter a little bit of research i came to the conclusion that the Serial communication method is a little out-dated and naturally IP / Wireless has become the norm. I’ll need to build controllers which will take the data from the main PC running the sequencing software ( Vixen) and in turn switch on the correct LED’s at the designated values.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |