FastLED, 2 strips with different brightness settings

Using Arduino LEDs and Multiplexing
1

I've got a couple of LED strips that I'm using and one of them is diffused behind some semi-opaque material and looks a lot dimmer. I'm trying to figure out how to set different brightness levels for each strip. I was able to do this with the Neopixel library, but I want to move to FastLED for other reasons and I'm having trouble figuring it out. Does anyone know how to do this in FastLED?

2

Haven't use fastled for a while but look at:

FastLED.setBrightness( BRIGHTNESS );

3

I know how to set it globally, but I need to set two different levels for two different strips. I tried adding .setBrightness to the FastLED strip declarations but I got an error compiling. The FastLED.setBrightness function doesn’t seem to take a variable for an individual strip.

4

FYI

5

Yes, depending how you configure the two strips you might loose brightness control of individual strips.
There is a discussion of the various ways you can drive multiple LED strips and what methods offer separate brightness control and what do not.

6

I’ve read both of those pages multiple times and neither one mentions how to control individual strip brightness. The page on multiple strips mentions losing global control if you want to write to strips individually which means I could use that, but I want to write to the strips at the same time so that’s not really a solution for me. One of the reasons I’m switching from the Neopixel library is because I can’t write to the strips at the same time.

7

The page on multiple strips mentions losing global control if you want to write to strips individually which means I could use that, but I want to write to the strips at the same time so that's not really a solution for me.

I think you misunderstood what it was saying.

You can not write to both strips at the same time but one after the other you are not going to be able to see anything other than it happens at the same time.

You select the brightness level on the show function. This can be different on each strips.

I'm switching from the Neopixel library is because I can't write to the strips at the same time.

You can’t on the Adafruit Neopixel libiary either.