I made a wee compilation of my most nature-themed patterns, all written so they work on any mapped screen where the relative X/Y is known for each pixel. They all make extensive use of FastLED palettes, noise and wave functions.
https://youtu.be/7MNu9Uh8_Ds
Yea, that looks really cool. Some days, I wish I did 2D, but then again, I have a basement full of 1D strip bamboo and steel wire or mesh lanterns. Like 30 of 'em. . . I’m heavily invested in 1D.
Like a lot your fire simulation , do you mind sharing the code ? , thank you ¡
nice jobs !! how leds ? what is the led density?
@Yves_BAZIN It has 220 leds in an A3 size (22x10, 60 leds/m strip), it actually looks ok for some of the modes with half of that, it’s an offset grid not a square grid which I think works better for screens like this.
@Gustavo_K No code yet, it’s not easy to use without also sharing my mapping code which I keep meaning to finally release as open source. it’s about 80% done at the moment, I will post in the group when it’s finished because it’s really useful.
@devicer ok, thank you , I’m not interested on the mapping , if you code your effect independently of the leds mapping , then it is possible to apply them on any matrix .
@devicer Looks great - when you say offset grid you just mean that the spacing is different for the x and y axis? So this display has 22 pixels across and is 10 pixels high? It looks great given the density!
Most of the stuff I’ve been making recently has very irregular shapes (coats and masks and hats etc), so I’ve started to just go for a lookup table for every single project. I used to beat my head against the mapping and always spend half my time debugging that, but now that I’ve gone to lookup tables - its an extra 10 minutes in Excel setting up my map as a CSV before I program the controller, but it makes everything I do pretty universal and its easy to fix if I miscounted a strip or need to add in some sacrificial pixels. Highly recommend it!
@chad_steinglass By offset i mean that every second row is offset by half the distance between leds on the strip, I reckon it looks better under a diffuser than a straight grid, especially with smooth noise based patterns. In crude and hopefully format-preserved ascii:
|–|--|–|-
|–|--|–|
|–|--|–|
@devicer Gotcha - awesome. I’ve thought about making offset grids for some of my stuff, but I haven’t tried it yet. In your mapping code then, do you account for the offset? meaning one row on the Y axis only has pixels at odd X coordinates and the next only has pixels on even X coordinates, in order to preserve the ability to draw mostly straight/smooth lines? The only downside to this is I would think that it would mean you would have to have your image in memory with twice as many pixels, but only display every other one… or am I wrong?
Thanks!
@chad_steinglass The mapping just stores the relative coords of each light, it has 2 arrays for x and y coords and both use 8 bit unsigned so it needs ledcount*2 bytes extra. All the patterns shown are generated from noise using the coordinates from the map arrays so there’s no extra overhead beyond the mapping memory. You do lose perfect vertical lines with offset grid but horizontals are obviously fine and the verticals are not too bad really. I wrote a line-drawer function that will show the jaggy edges better by dimming them slightly too so that’s an option. If you really need perfect lines then it’s not for you!
@devicer OK - I think I understand… so the grid is offset but when mapping you just don’t worry about it too much (which I’m sure is totally fine behind the diffuser)
so your map size is [NUM_X * NUM_Y], identical to if it were a square grid, rather than [NUM_X * NUM_Y * 2] where half the locations are “blank” or mapped to null as they fall between two pixels on a strip
I use a lot of faux fur as a diffuser, so maybe I’ll rig up a little test offset grid like this and try a couple of different methods for both mapping and LED strip spacing and see what looks good!
Thanks for the idea!
Total newb here: I’m at the beginnings of a grid wall display 9h x 100w and this is the exact effect I was going for. The LEDs will be hidden behind weathered planks of wood about 1/2" from the wall. I was going for great noise motions like this.