Animating an LED strip from a computer

By controlling the LED strip from a computer, you can do almost anything! I used it to create a dancing light show for music.

Oct 22, 2016

59508 views

83 respects

Components and supplies

1

USB-A to B Cable

1

Arduino UNO

1

5V 10A switching power supply

1

NeoPixel strip

1

Capacitor 1000 µF

1

Female DC Power adapter - 2.1mm jack to screw terminal block

1

Jumper wires (generic)

1

Resistor 475 ohm

Project description

Code

syncstrip binaries

csharp

Use this if you do not want to compile syncstrip yourself. It may have bugs, and may be outdated.

syncstrip

Latest commit to the master branch on 15-10-2016

syncstrip binaries

csharp

Use this if you do not want to compile syncstrip yourself. It may have bugs, and may be outdated.

syncstrip

Latest commit to the master branch on 15-10-2016

renderstrip

Latest commit to the master branch on 15-10-2016

Downloadable files

Basic Connections

Basic connections for a NeoPixel LED strip and an Arduino (image from Adafruit)

Basic Connections

Basic Connections

Basic connections for a NeoPixel LED strip and an Arduino (image from Adafruit)

Basic Connections

Comments

Only logged in users can leave comments

Anonymous user

2 years ago

How do I create the png for a song? What would it look like? What is the size of each box? What does each box mean? Thanks

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Is there any way to make the animation loop?

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Could someone tell me what program I would have to use in order for it to sync to my Arduino Uno. Also what you use to program the LEDs.

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Absolutely an awesome project. I would love for you to to include the sprite for the song used in the youtube-vidjayo as an example instead. But anyways, great work and thank you for sharing it!

Anonymous user

2 years ago

This project is amazing . please share source code of this project in my mail id (prabhat.karmakar@live.com)

Anonymous user

2 years ago

plz tell me what to do after uploading render.ino into uno where how i will be using sync strip binaries

Anonymous user

2 years ago

plz share the animation for this music

Anonymous user

2 years ago

your communication protocol code helped me a ton in figuring out my own. Thank you so much for sharing!

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Wow great project. my compliments its very beautyfull. i'm a newby here but i wanne learn how to make a simaliry project like this. can you explain me how to begin and then how to do every following step? i'm very impressed. hopefully you want to help me? i appreciate any help. best regards Marco

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Amazing project! I want to create something like this, but I would love to have them look like traditional Christmas light bulbs. I looked on adafruit and they don't sell anything that isn't a flat strand. Would this work with other rgb light strands?

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Would ws2811 work? what about these pixels? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100pcs-DC12V-WS2811-LED-C9-pixel-node-with-faceted-White-C9-cover-together/1002760224.html?spm=2114.40010408.3.44.rxMUeY

kendfrey

2 years ago

As far as I can tell, any WS2812B or compatible LEDs should work. If you're lucky, you may be able to find them in bulbs. There's a good chance you'd need to manufacture your own by placing a diffuse bulb or cover over each LED and connecting them into a string manually. Longer strands may fail because of the speed and timing requirements of the chips. Any non-addressable RGB strands simply won't be able to display more than one color at a time.

kendfrey

2 years ago

I'm not sure if the Neopixel library is compatible with WS2811 LEDs, but if it's not, there are other libraries that are.

Anonymous user

2 years ago

Brilliant! Really good! :)

marcorens

3 years ago

Wow great project. my compliments its very beautyfull. i'm a newby here but i wanne learn how to make a simaliry project like this. can you explain me how to begin and then how to do every following step? i'm very impressed. hopefully you want to help me? i appreciate any help. best regards Marco

Anonymous user

4 years ago

your communication protocol code helped me a ton in figuring out my own. Thank you so much for sharing!

Anonymous user

4 years ago

Is there any way to make the animation loop?

Anonymous user

6 years ago

plz share the animation for this music

Anonymous user

6 years ago

plz tell me what to do after uploading render.ino into uno where how i will be using sync strip binaries

Anonymous user

6 years ago

How do I create the png for a song? What would it look like? What is the size of each box? What does each box mean? Thanks

CyberdyneT800

6 years ago

Fascinating project, thank you for sharing it with us all. Just one question, am I right in thinking that an animation would need to be written for each song? The reason I ask is because I am building a touch screen jukebox and I would love to incorporate your project into mine, the only problem would be my life wouldn't be long enough to spend 20 hours compiling animations for each song! Lol Regards John

gbd03933

2 years ago

did you find an auto animations

CyberdyneT800

2 years ago

Many thanks for that, understood, I'll go off and find one. All the best

Anonymous user

2 years ago

plz share your animation png

kendfrey

2 years ago

Yes, the animation is designed by hand for each song. You definitely don't need 20 hours per song to get something that looks good though. The reason it took me so long was because I had to create all the effects pretty much from scratch, and I used a lot of them. Once you have the technique down and a set of easy effects you can reuse, you could animate a song pretty well in 1 hour. There is also the option to use a program to generate animations automatically. There are many projects that do this. I did this myself for testing. If you're going to be dealing with thousands of songs, this is probably the only viable option.

Anonymous user

7 years ago

Absolutely an awesome project. I would love for you to to include the sprite for the song used in the youtube-vidjayo as an example instead. But anyways, great work and thank you for sharing it!

Anonymous user

8 years ago

Could someone tell me what program I would have to use in order for it to sync to my Arduino Uno. Also what you use to program the LEDs.

Starkie

8 years ago

Brilliant! Really good! :)

Papai

8 years ago

This project is amazing . please share source code of this project in my mail id (prabhat.karmakar@live.com)

matthewrowberry

8 years ago

Amazing project! I want to create something like this, but I would love to have them look like traditional Christmas light bulbs. I looked on adafruit and they don't sell anything that isn't a flat strand. Would this work with other rgb light strands?

matthewrowberry

2 years ago

Would ws2811 work? what about these pixels? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100pcs-DC12V-WS2811-LED-C9-pixel-node-with-faceted-White-C9-cover-together/1002760224.html?spm=2114.40010408.3.44.rxMUeY

kendfrey

2 years ago

I'm not sure if the Neopixel library is compatible with WS2811 LEDs, but if it's not, there are other libraries that are.

kendfrey

2 years ago

As far as I can tell, any WS2812B or compatible LEDs should work. If you're lucky, you may be able to find them in bulbs. There's a good chance you'd need to manufacture your own by placing a diffuse bulb or cover over each LED and connecting them into a string manually. Longer strands may fail because of the speed and timing requirements of the chips. Any non-addressable RGB strands simply won't be able to display more than one color at a time.