Monday, January 29, 2018

Arduino WS2812 144 LED per Meter sign

I am building a third sign that has 144LED per meter or 1/4 inch LED spacing.  The first tests indicate lots of bad connections.  The issue is likely in the LED strips being shipped wrapped on a spool that is too small.

In this first picture the middle row quits about 3/4 the way across the sign.  One of the pixels in the "U" is red but that is hard to tell in the picture.

In this next picture the bottom right corner LED is out.  The third row down is a different shade of blue but you cannot see that in the picture.

here is the video of the first test.  Some of the issues went away during the video indicating they are caused by bad connections.


When I tried to run all 16 rows by wrapping the top 8 rows back to the bottom 8 rows this is what I got.  Only 3 of the bottom 8 rows came to life.

I finally was able to fix all of the bad connections.  I even replaced some of the strips to get it to work.  There is a yellow LED that is red in the picture.

This picture shows that there are still some bad connections!!  After fixing many many of them!


Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Audio Spectrum Analyzer with Arduino UNO+MSGEQ7+WS2812 LED Strips Part 2

I have improved the Audio Spectrum Analyzer.  By increasing the number of MSGEQ7's and offsetting them I now have 21 frequencies per channel.  In order to display all of them the sign had to be turned sideways.

This first version supports 8 LED strips:


This second version supports two sets of 8 LED strips for a total of 16 strips.


I can even do an oscilloscope on the WS2812 LED sign.


This is the schematic of the foreign made MSGEQ7 shield that I used.  Then I made my own shield that is offset to add the additional frequencies.

Friday, January 5, 2018

Even More Arduino Uno With WS2812 LED Strips and Arrays

I have also made a larger higher density LED sign.  It features 90 LED's per row and 16 columns.  That is 1440 LED's.  It is running from an Arduino UNO.  Last night with some adjustments to the timing I was able to get it to work.

The software now supports a different color for each letter as in this picture.

Here is the shades of color test, it supports 256 shades of each color.

Here is a video of it displaying text and running the color test and fireworks effect.



Later on I was able to get the sign to scroll.


Now it can be programmed from a cellphone via bluetooth!


Now you can change the color from the phone.


Monday, January 1, 2018

More Arduino Uno With WS2812 LED Strips and Arrays

I have been continuing to do things with an Arduino UNO and addressable LED's.  I think my next book will be called "Arduino Addressable LED Projects".  I would prefer to keep the title to three words and "Addressable" is a long word.  Another option is "Arduino LED Strip Projects".  What do you think is the best title?

Currently I am experimenting with an 8x32 array.  Internally it is wired as 8 LED segments with a zigzag wiring so each column is reversed.

Here is my worm video that shows how it is wired internally:

Here is some text being displayed on it.

I have improved the software even more!  It now supports 256 shades of each color and a color for each letter.