Hi, I dont know if this is the right place to ask this, but I see all these really good effects done on WS2812 led strips or similar and I’m wondering how do people come up with the algorithms for such cool effects? All I can really do is drive strip through for loop and do some pretty simple things with that. I’m wondering would you guys have any good advice on what to practice or what/where to learn to make more complex effects and algorithms?
Search for “fastled” at http://pastbin.com, http://gist.github.com, adafruilt, and elsewhere. You will find lots of examples to explore.
Copy and EDIT those examples, changing variables or adding little bits and see how it effects the display.
See some effect you like in a video? Make a post here and ask how it might be done-- I’m sure you will get suggestions and ideas.
Try lots of little experiments and they will spur more ideas.
How do we come up with these effects? In my case, I grew up in and survived the 60’s/70’s.
Try playing with two approaches. Look for code on a Comet or Meteor.
Give it a position and move it back and forth between 0 and NUM_LEDs. Wherever it is, draw a few bright pixels. Then go through the whole strip and fade all the pixels randomly a little bit. Now move the comet position by one and repeat.
That should give you an idea how to draw and fade something basic!
I just copy ideas from stuff you see here and try and implement that with my own code. Occasionally someone will request a tweak here or there or something to add to it. I’ve never done anything heavier than panadol so perhaps that’s the problem.