It’s Mermaid season! I’m polishing up my LED mermaid tail for a bunch of upcoming gigs and a photo / video shoot in Mexico.
Mermaid Glimmer really wants some new fresh animations so I’m shouting out to you guys: anyone have a favorite animation you’d like to see on this tail? I’d love to feature some of the amazing code you guys write. Send me your favorite animations and I’ll send you some video of what they look like on Mermaid Glimmer. 
https://www.facebook.com/mermaidglimmer
Are there colors you think look better or that you prefer?
And how many pixels btw?
Which and how many leds do you have? Which controller do you use?
I’ve got 4 strands of 40 LEDs apiece on the bottom of the tail. They’re mirrored and laid out in a spiral pattern. I’m using an Arduino Micro. As for colors, the tail is mostly white so everything looks good. I really enjoy twinkly patterns. I’ll post a video of what I’ve got running on there now for some inspiration. 
Thanks. Are the 4 strands connected as one long one or on 4 seperate data pins? Which leds? WS2812? APAs?
Front and back left-side are connected to pin 7, front and back right-side on pin 8. The lights on the upper “skirt” part of the tail (front and back) are connected to pin 9. There are 13-14 LEDs on this strand. Everything is WS2812B. Here’s a video… you can see pretty clearly in the last animation (cylon) how the strands are laid out.
Not sure, if the Micro has enough RAM but if yes this should work after you changed the setup part. https://gist.github.com/StefanPetrick/c856b6d681ec3122e5551403aabfcc68 In case it´s slow just play with the factors in line 103 and 106.
hmmm… nope, the Micro doesn’t like it. 
That’s a shame. I’ll have to try this one on a different project.
How many leds do you have at all? Maybe limit the matrix size to 15x15 or 14x14 if the result is bigger then your physical number of leds. Yes, the code is pretty hungry for RAM.
oh I’ve got it working now… playing with the parameters.
In case of questions just ask.
This looks really cool! It’s a little different because it’s not a square matrix but I squeezed it into a 5x9 and I like the rhythm of it a lot. Really organic.
I hooked it up to some of @Mark_Kriegsman 's code so it’s blending from palette to palette every 10 seconds or so. I could watch this for hours.
It’s too bright in my workshop to get good video right now (the changes are pretty subtle and not coming through on the video) but I’ll try and get some video later tonight.
Glad that you got it working! You might want to play with the scale factors and the change of speed for x, y and z in case it´s too slow and subtle.
I have yet to find a layout/arrangement that Mark’s ColorWavesWithPalettes does not look amazing on, with the proper mapping. I’ve tested on strips, rings, strings, matrices, trees, cubes, spheres, rhombic triacontahedrons, fibonacci layouts, etc, but I’ve never tested it on a mermaid…
@Jason_Coon that one’s on there already – it’s the one I call “designer palettes.” It’s one of my favorite animations ever. Thanks!
@Erin_St_Blaine Is it still mermaid season? (I’m hoping you say it’s ALWAYS mermaid season.) I was meaning to send you something but forgot about this while I was traveling.
It’s definitely still Mermaid Season! I just got back from the photo shoot with some AMAZING photos and footage, so stay tuned for a kickass video really soon, if all goes well. I do have lots of live performances coming up for the end of summer so would love to incorporate more modes… please send 'em over!
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Woah what a super photo @Erin_St_Blaine 
Here’s something sparkly you can experiment with. Hope you can incorporate into your patterns collection.
