LED Effects Recommendations

Hey,

Complete noobie here but really want to get started with the Arduino. Need to program a 10m strip of LED's and was hoping I could get
some direction on the best hardware to get started with. I'm looking at either a HL1606 or LPD8808 strip, whichever you think has the best
possible effects, and an Arduino with power supply for them.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Carl

As far as I can tell the HL1606 will allow you to control what the light does with an arduino where as the LPD8808 just cycles through it's own effects, so I would say a HL1606.

Doh. Typo...meant the LPD8806 lights.

The LPD8806 (now that you fixed the typo) is way better than the very bad HL1606 chip. You for sure want the LPD8806 version.

  • Note is say individual control - 32 steps. You don't get that with the HL1606 chip - in fact you don't get much with the HL1606 chip - hence the reason for the upgrade on that site :slight_smile:

Thanks a bunch. Could you recommend the best Arduino to control a 10m strip?

Carl

With regard to control they are all very much the same so go with a Uno.

Thanks, got an UNO on order. Any help in locating effects code for the LPD8806's?
Not finding much yet.

Carl

Excellent, thanks. Is it possible to start/execute Arduino sketches using AppleScript?
My application requires that a remote machine send the machine the Arduino is connected
to, an AppleScript to execute various sketches.

Any info on controlling the Arduino with AppleScript greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Carl

bump

AppleScript is a scripting language to control Apple applications, you can not control an arduino directly from it. The arduino IDE has no support for AppleScript.

You have to go through an intermediate application that can then trigger a message to be sent over the serial port.
However I don't know of any. For this it would be better to start another thread in the Programming or Interfacing section, but please not both only one new thread.

Thanks, will do.

Carl

I can say that any chip controlled by the fastspi library is an easily controlled chip.
http://code.google.com/p/fastspi/

I use it with my custom ws2801 based light bars and find it a joy to work with (once you source the ws2801's themselves)

Might you have an opinion which LED strip chip set is the best for complex effects with an Arduino? The type of effects I'd like to achieve I haven't seen in any demo yet, as having a comet effect travel to LED 125, of a strip of 320, and stop there and begin shimmering out in both directions.

Probably a steep learning curve for a newbie like me but it would be good to know what is possible before I dive in with possibly a strip that can't be completely controlled
for most any effect. The LPD8806 seems promising if I knew it was capable of the type of effect above.

Many thanks!

Carl

Would love to hear from anyone on just how programmable the LPD8806 strips are...for example
if I could program things like I mentioned above.

Carl

I just ordered 2 - 1 m strips of the LPD8806 controlled RGB LEDs from Adafruit so will be playing with these as well.

I also ordered 200 - LPD8806 ICs and 400 - 5050 RGB LEDs from a China wholesaler to build my own lighting strips. It is much more cost effective doing it yourself. For about $45 (inc s/h) you get 32 RGB LEDs that have 16 LPD8806s on it. For $57, I got 200 RGB LEDs and 100 LPD8806s. That's enough for 6 meters worth at the same spacing.

Now I need to get enough SMD resistors, SMD capacitors, and design some PCBs to allow stringing these together as needed. Only thing lost is flexibility of the strips.