Arduino, vixen , pixel light.
Good day. I would like to ask this thing. I am building a light show, using arduino to program pixel light via vixen. Question is... how many pixel light can i control with arduino pin, if i will use independent power supply for pixel light but data definitely comes from arduino. TIA.
Don’t know what ‘vixen’ is.
If you used WS2821B Neopixel strips, you need 3 bytes per pixel connected to your Arduino pin.
Different Arduinos can control different amounts of addressable LED's
Power consumption / CURRENT is you biggest concern.
Each LED depending on exact type has a set max current it can consume.
Example lets say each draws 100 mA and your external power supply only has 500mA then that would be 5 LED's before you reached the capacity of the PSU.
There can also be limits to the length of a strip because the data may not travel over a certain length without degradation.
That can often be overcome with a small signal amp of some description.
Really need a lot more information so I suggest you READ THIS POST.
Bob
The more complex your patterns and animations, and the more of those patterns there are, the fewer pixels an Arduino can control.
For Uno/Nano/Pro Micro, with a few simple patterns, maybe 500 leds.
For Mega, maybe 2000 leds.
The limitation is the amount of RAM memory these types of Arduino have.
There are many types of Arduino available and some have the ability to control far more leds because they have far more RAM memory, but most of those are 3.3V, not 5V like Uno/Mega, so a level converter chip will be needed. Ask here before you buy if you want to use other types of Arduino or level converters.
There will be another problem with large number of leds. If a large number of leds are controlled by the same Arduino pin, the speed at which the strip can be updated is slower. For example if 2000 leds are controlled by 1 pin, they can be updated at about 15 times per second.
Atmega1284P boards have 16k SRAM, can hold data for a lot of LEDs, 16*1024/3 = 5461. Can't use all of it, the program will need some room to run in. 5V part too, 16 and 20MHz.