On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Mykle Hansen <[email protected]> wrote:
> What's your favorite cheap/easy way to get a string of programmable > RGB LEDs, 30-50 feet long, that can let us send lighting changes in > a wave from one end to the other? My favorites: LED strips: Order the WS2812b model from aliexpress.com . I've had good luck with a vendor named "Ray Wu", very fast delivery and competitive prices. Microcontroller: PJRC's Teensy 3.1, with the OctoWS2811 Adaptor board. I'd want to insert these deep > inside the arms of the squid, surrounded by transluscent puffy > filling inside some kind of transluscent plastic skin, so hopefully > it'd diffuse nicely into a general inner glow. > I suggest figuring this out before ordering 30-50 feet of LED strips. Maybe buy 1 meter from an American vendor (Sparkfun/Adafruit) and build a proof of concept. My experience is that LED diffusion *never* looks as nice as you hope. I would probably try a clear plastic exterior (maybe with a coating of spray frost on the inside), then stuff it full of crumpled cellophane. Tissue paper would probably absorb too much light. > Then also we'd need a control/power solution for approximately ten > of those arms, and some kind of software framework or library for > trying to achieve the kind of trembling irridescent stuff that I've > seen squids do. > I can offer help if you're having programming issues. I like programming for WS281X. Power-wise: 30 feet of WS2812b @ 60LEDs/meter == ~9 meters * 5V * 0.05A * 60 == 135 watts at full brightness. Yowza. If you're only lighting a few LEDs at a time, then you're probably OK. But if there's a bug in your program, and the LEDs suddenly draw too much power, well... You're in undefined territory. I'm > probably only going to have limited time for this but if I can > price out something off-the-shelf I may be able to find budget > for it. > I hate to say it, but the project you're describing is *big*. If you can get a 1-meter proof-of-concept working by next weekend, then you *might* be able to source all the parts and get everything assembled in time for XOXO. -- Z
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