Hi everyone!
Some time ago, I figured out that I would make 3 hexagon-shaped frames, join them together, and put an LED strip inside to create a unique lamp.
However, the time has come for the LED strips. Initially they were going to be normal, but I saw a ripple/floating water effect the other day and really wanted to do something like this.
After looking through many forums on the subject, I decided on an ESP32 WLED controller with pushbutton output and a SK6812 programmable RGBW strip.
However, I haven’t started putting it together, because I’m bothered - how to connect and map it…
I would like to get a ripple effect when the button is pressed, but I don’t know how to connect everything to make sense.
Variant 1: I create 3 strips and solder them in series to form one long one.
The downside of this variant is the large distance between the 2nd and 3rd hexagon because the connection will fall somewhere between 1 and 2.
The plus is that I theoretically have one long strip.
Variant 2: I create 3 strips and lead each of them out with a separate wire, and connect them all only at the controller.
Minuses: there are none?
Pros: convenience of creation
I’ve read - although I don’t know if I’m thinking correctly - that I can do variant 2 for the power supply alone to have a constant 12V voltage for all 3 strips, and variant 1 for the data bus (which is one). Will this work correctly?
The second issue is mapping. Can I set/map the diodes so that by turning them on one by one they form a path in the shape of the number 8 (but still extended by half eight / something like the infinity sign but having three half circles and three intersections) in which we traverse the entire path turning back with the possibility of intersecting another line?
or maybe everything I have described and with which is unrealistic?
As far as wired connections go, there’s (always) 2 distinctions: how to do power and how to data?
Power
Pretty simple (IMHO), make sure you have large enough wire to carry the worst case current you need and add injection points to deal with long strips. In your case it’s probably not a huge issue as it looks like you’re dealing with < 30 LEDs.
Data Physical data connections need to be one long strip if you only have one data source (one GPIO). If you use multiple GPIOs then each strip can have it’s own data line. There are caveats about the length of any data line (from an LED to its data source) but I expect you’re probably OK in general.
Logical data (how your string of 20ish LEDs appears in WLED) is much simpler. WLED doesn’t care how you wire things up (normally). All it really wants is a count of how many LEDs are attached to each GPIO. It then presents that as one long logical string for you to manipulate. So from a software POV, option 1 or 2 will appear the same.
Mapping LED order is handled via… Ledmaps
There are a wide variety of options, especially as you can have different maps for different presets and effects.
You may want to try some of those out before you put it all together so you get a feel for what you can do in the software
There will be a bit more than 30 diodes, because I wanted to use 4-5m and the strip has 60led/m. But with 12V and 3 parallel leads there shouldn’t be a problem.
Either way, it’s great that you don’t see the dangers here, because the more I read, the more I understand and notice potential problems.
As you get up to 300 LEDs you need to pay more attention to some details:
Make sure your power supply is capable of driving the entire setup in the worst case (all LEDs 100% white).
Make sure that power is distributed to the entire strip. Remember, the strip itself is made of “wires”. They’re usually the (rough) equivalent of 22AWG, so 3A over 1m is going to give force some voltage drop. That’s what injection points are for - to compensate for the drops. Use of 12V helps as it reduces the total current (A’s) you need.
You’ll want a levelshifter for the data line(s). Many good ESP boards have them builtin or you can roll your own. Don’t use I2C shifters, they’re not reliable.
Watch out for long data lines. As you get over 3m from the ESP to your LEDs, there’s a risk of signal degradation (=> flicker and random noise). Bunch of options, including inline data resistors or Long Data Lines
