FPP + Pixel stick

[Notenoughlights]

I've had a little play around and thought it'd be handy to have a portable show player that can connect to a pixel stick. I'm not even sure if this is possible with FPP, I have the onboard wifi and an external wifi adapter connected and both are working and showing up in the network settings. I'm just not sure how I would end up connecting the Pi to the Pixel stick.
I have tried connecting FPP to the pixel sticks network and that didn't work (Possibly due to an IP difference, not sure)
Pixel stick is running Wled with e1.31 enabled, and does work when in the configuration with FPP ->Ethernet->Router/wifiAP -> Pixel Stick however this is not what I am after, as it is not portable
It does not seem to work when in this configuration Pixel stick -> FPP wlan0 (Set to broadcast FPP SSID)

 

[SmartAlecLights]

sounds like you want the onboard wifi to be a access point for the pixelsticks to connect to. (rasp pi can do it.. dont know if anyone has done it with fpp yet)

 

[BAZMick]

Grab a RPi-28D+ pi hat from Hanson electronics and put it on top of the pi, you can run up to 800+ ?? Pixels per port on the 2x WS2811 ports. I think from memory there is a voltage regulator on the hat which you can power using 8-28vdc so should be able to power it from a car or truck without issue. If that's the ideas your after?
We should check with @AAH if the regulator can handle this.
Was thinking of doing something like this myself this year.

 

[Notenoughlights]

sounds like you want the onboard wifi to be a access point for the pixelsticks to connect to. (rasp pi can do it.. dont know if anyone has done it with fpp yet)

Yeah, totally forgot that it has it's own IP address, got it working now (Had to change the IP from the regular IP that it usually connects to, to the one the Pi gives it.

 

[AAH]

Grab a RPi-28D+ pi hat from Hanson electronics and put it on top of the pi, you can run up to 800+ ?? Pixels per port on the 2x WS2811 ports. I think from memory there is a voltage regulator on the hat which you can power using 8-28vdc so should be able to power it from a car or truck without issue. If that's the ideas your after?
We should check with @AAH if the regulator can handle this.
Was thinking of doing something like this myself this year.

The rpi-28D+ can do 800 pixels at 40fps or 1600 pixels at 20fps from each of the 2 outputs.
The regulator will handle 25V (based on my late night memory) so a 24V vehicle that is running would potentially have too high a voltage.
I have used the 5V input as a 5V output when powering the board from 12V. In theory you really should attempt to try to run more than 50 pixels at 100% brightness.
If you use a Pi Zero wireless, a rpi-28D (or rpi-28D) and a battery like a 18V battery drill battery you could get a few hrs running 50 pixels or via some extra fiddling you could get more pixels and more hours.

 

[Notenoughlights]

sounds like you want the onboard wifi to be a access point for the pixelsticks to connect to. (rasp pi can do it.. dont know if anyone has done it with fpp yet)

Ok, it's getting interesting now. I thought it was working, however when I set the source interface in the output setup to Wlan0 (Onboard wifi) I don't get any output to the pixel stick, that is connected to the onboard FPP network (I can see it is connected in the pixel stick's config menu)
I change the source interface to Eth0 and suddenly I get an output from the pixel stick, and it starts playing my sequences.
I'm not sure what's going on here. If I unplug the Ethernet cord, the pixel stick stops (not instantly, it runs through about 10 frames then freezes and cuts to "no data" pattern which is odd) and reverts to its "no data" mode

Seems to work fine with an external Wireless USB adapter as I want, with only power attached to the Pi and no Ethernet cable