Pixelblaze V2 – An advanced LED pattern development engine and controller

How does this compare to FastLED [1] on the same ESP8266 (and ESP32) platform? FastLED is free and open source, and support almost all LED drivers out there. Writing animations with FastLED might not be as easy as with Pixelblaze, but similarly only requires a few lines of code.

[1] https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED

If you want to get a feel for what you can make, you can browse published patterns here: https://electromage.com/patterns/

I was interviewed by embedded.fm about Pixelblaze and some other projects https://www.embedded.fm/episodes/220 Might be interesting to other folks wanting to do something similar, we cover some of the meta around making and selling a DIY thing and learning things along the way. Highly recommend the podcast as well.

Reading the article reminded me that APA has been threatening vendors of the WS2812, claiming that it infringes one of their patents: https://hackaday.com/2018/07/31/are-patent-claims-coming-for...

Curious if it can accept DMX in any form? (Though iirc DMX only goes to 16bit color)

Off topic but I like that his website puts the menu where your thumb on mobile can actually reach it

This is exactly what I imagined a great LED pattern management system would be, except executed 10 times better than anything I could have built.

I've spent the last four years learning the art and craft of LED art. I suppose I wouldn't change the way that I do things, but if I were starting out again I'd definitely use this. I can very much appreciate all of the work that this system takes off of my hands. The auto-recompile low-iteration-time is key. Very impressive!

If you want an interesting side project: spin a string of these addressable LEDs to make a circular display, or sweep a plane of them for a display volume.

I'm working on several medium sized LED projects and am curious if anyone has a guide or links to buying WS2812 or similar strands.

I've bought a ~10 of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZHB9M6A/ref=oh_aui_sear... but I would love to find a slightly cheaper source. Alibaba seems to sell them at half the cost but product titles, photos, and descriptions don't ever seem to match

Ws28xx LEDs based projects are worth doing . Here is one of my project Alexa + Ws2812b https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTAEfD8b7A

Audio Reactive lights - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LXyipKAUpEs