Most Powerful (Processing) Hardware?

What board has the most processing power and is fully supported to run WLED? I am looking at driving around 2200 LEDs and I don’t want it to stutter at all.

Thanks!

ESP32 WROVER or ESP32 S3, both are fully supported, S3 is a tiny bit faster but has less hardware capabilities (and can be a pain to install)

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I’ve run larger installs than that on a normal ESP32 WROVER (pretty bog-standard ESP32). The key is to physically break up the strip into segments and use a different EPS32 output line for each segment.

Done correctly, you can either then have different effects on each output/segment or treat all of them as a single set of LEDs for a single effect (i.e. no downside to physically splitting the LEDs onto separate outputs).

If you want to figure out how many LEDs per output, setup a ESP32 with WLED for testing (you don’t actually have to attach any LEDs), set the # of LEDs on a single output to your expected max, run an effect that constantly “moves” and ideally, represents what you will eventually be using and use the Info display to show/check the frame rate.

If it’s under about 30, then setup a 2nd output, set both outputs to half the #, and run again. Keep splitting it up until you get to at least 30 FPS and you should be good for most effects.

I’ve run about 1024 per segment/output for about 20FPS (which was all I needed on a 8000+ WLED install), so I’m guessing if you shoot for closer to 500/output, you should be good (though effects can play a role as more computationally intense effects will drop frame rate too).

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Nice! Thanks for the tip. I was thinking i needed to get all the LEDs connected first before testing. I’ll give that a try.

Awesome, Thank You!

I ended up getting an ESP32 WROVER and set it up with 250 pixels per GPIO x 8 GPIO for a total of 2000 pixels. I broke it up this way because I am going to inject power every 250 pixels.

I setup the board and did the test you suggested. Most effects run around 30fps. Some, like Aurora drop it down to 20-23 fps though. I there anything else I should be doing to optimize the board?

For reference I am making a higher res version of this previous build.

That was 162 pixels, this one will be 10+ times that, so any advice would be appreciated. Ultimately I would love to find a way to display video on this too.

Thanks!

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Pipplee

I was looking at this.

I want to stream a video file not just an animated GIF.

use parallel I2S output (available in 0.15.1 and nightly) to get a bit more speed. Aurora is a very demanding FX, low FPS is normal on that one ( I may try to optimize it to mak it faster). Other than that, you hit the speed limit for 2000 pixels.

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It might be easier to use something like a Kulp K8-PB and program your effects in xlights and send them to the controller. K8-PB-Almost – Kulp Lights LLC $112 for a defect board where the e fuse does not turn off on port 2. 800 pixels per port x 8 ports @ 40 fps. Can add 12 more ports VIE diff receivers and another 16 ports using a falcon expansion board. :slightly_smiling_face:

FPP has basic WLED effects built in. I am not 100% sure the version of FPP for the pocket beagle has it or not. I would guess it does.

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Is parallel I2S outputs a setting I need to enable or a certain pin configuration to use.

setting checkmark, below led output settings

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