Hi,
As you can see here, I started to play with a 8x32 NeoPixel display.
For the brightness, I use these levels:
const int curve[12] = { 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 45, 65, 100, 170, 255};
The difference between off (brightness = 0) and the lowest brightness (brighness = 1) is too big. I would like a NeoPixel to be 5% of level 1 as a starting level.
The FastLED library has dithering. That dithering is rather coarse, and does not work well with that many leds. It depends on the sketch, but I think the update is about 10 times per second.
I read that one NeoPixel takes 30µs, so 256 NeoPixels should take 8 ms. That is a 125 Hz update rate.
Assuming a update of 25 Hz is enough, then it would be possible to have 5 levels of dithering (in theory).
I'm using a Arduino Uno at the moment.
I plan to use a ESP32 and I might give the NeoPixels their minimal voltage of 3.5V and a light diffuser will be added (I have not found the right material yet).
What else can I do to lower the brightness in a nice way ?