I had zero knowledge about the Arduino and programmable LEDs before this project and had to spend tons of time looking for the information. For anyone who'll decide to start a similar project I've structured project and README to be a starting point. Have fun and build sth awesome 🦋
Catharsis is an installation built in the shape of a butterfly painted in traditional Ukrainian Petrykivka style at Burning Man 2019. The edge of the installation was covered with the LED panel to make installation interactive at night.
The repository contains the software to run animations and control LED panel.
LEDs: WS2815 12V LED pixels strip, dual-signal
Controller: Teensy 3.2, Arduino based board + OctoWS Adaptor
Library: FastLED
Dev Environment: VS Code + Platform IO plugin
We had 8 parallel lines of LEDs, each ~17m long, 140m of LED strip or 4200 pixels in total.
LED strip consumes 9W per meter of strip ⇒ 1260W (or 105A) peak load.
Timelapse from the last test before heading to the desert (c) @ozasadnyy.
Why WS2815 LEDs?
WS2815 are more expensive, but comparing to the most popular WS2812 version:
- They are 12V, which allowed reducing the current in the system from crazy 300A to manageable 105A
- WS2815 has backup data line, which means when one LED dies, the rest of the strip keeps working. In WS2812 - all LEDs after the broken one will stop working.
Why Teensy?
Teensy is excellent for LED projects, mainly because of OctoWS Adaptor that allows parallelizing data output. It is powerful enough to control up to 5000 LEDs on 60 FPS.
Why FastLED?
FastLED has tons of examples, the great community around, and it works great with OctoWS Adaptor library.
Why VS Code and Platform IO?
I've tried default Arduino IDE; it works, and it is simple... too simple. If you're a software engineer, you'll feel yourself like in the notepad.
VS Code is a full-featured IDE, with a combination of Platform IO plugin allow embedded development in a few clicks. I've also tried the official Arduino plugin from Microsoft, but it doesn't support Teensy board because of the custom loader.
@vzasadnyyy LED panel prototype, controller hardware assemble and software architecture.
@ozasadnyy Animations and final software.
@eolexe Invaluable help to build the final 17m long LED panel.
The project is published under the MIT License. Feel free to copy, distribute, use for commercial purposes; just keep the authors in credits.