Greetings from Canada!

[whipsaw]

Hello all! I'm from western Canada and started looking into doing a sequenced LED display for Christmas 2021 after seeing another one locally, as well as Matt Johnson's displays online.
I have managed to get a friend involved locally as well so that we'll be able to bounce ideas off one another.

So far we've ordered a couple of the small Renard Plus ESP wifi controller board kits. I am planning to order some LED pixel strips from Amazon to build a couple of small trees so that I can play with lighting up sequences in my office. I am coveting the Falcon 16-channel expandable controller board, but given that I'm also a full time student at the moment, that will have to wait! The unfortunate thing with living in Canada is that many things for this hobby seem to ship out of the United States. You wouldn't think that would be a huge thing given that we're right next door to one another, but between the difference in currency value and rather expensive shipping, it sure adds up. Given that this is an Australian message board, I'm probably preaching to the choir on that one.

Anyway, thanks to you all for having this resource available online. The "101 document" that you've put together is incredibly helpful.

Cheers!
whipsaw

 

[TerryK]

Hi, welcome to ACL. For some design ideas and help with problems you may encounter I would suggest looking at the various ACL sections. They are all searchable. Forum threads are archived and using search one can see what topics have been discussed or debated previously. There is also the Chat Room and typically someone is either lurking or monitoring pretty much any hour.

Keeping things small until one has a better undestanding of animated RGB lighting is reccomended. You might also look at the RPis (Raspberry Pi) and the BBBs (Beagle Bone Black). When mated with hat/capes they make nice small controllers too. I prefer the WS2815 12 Volt strips sold by BTF Lighting on Amazon. One thing of note is that most of the WS2811 bullets on Amazon are manufactured with smaller than typical wiring and while I purchased some in my earlier stages I now avoid them. Also I have not yet seen any 12 Volt regulated bullets listed on Amazon. The ACL Wiki has a supplier list you may like to research.

 

[whipsaw]

TerryK, thanks for the info! I will dig in and do some reading. I believe BTF Lighting strips were the ones I had in mind from amazon.ca here, so I'm glad to hear they're decent, and I appreciate the warning about the WS2811 bullets. Do you get yours from Ray Wu or somewhere else, and what's an adequate wire gauge on the 2811 bullets in your experience?

 

[TerryK]

I cannot purchase anything through AliExpress or Ray Wu due to the financial entity I use. I obtain string pixels from either RGB Man, Wired Watts, or Wally's Lights. The WS2815 strip is BTF Lighting via Amazon. RGB Man does not stock any quantities so just about anything purchased from his site is drop shipped from China. This helps keep his costs down but also then results in a long delivery.

Look for 18 AWG wire size in strings with 4 inch pixel spacing. The wire size from China always runs small and if a listing does not indicate the size it will almost certainly be 20/22 AWG or less (higher # AWG size is a smaller wire). The 4 inch spacing works pretty well for most props. Ray Wu can do custom builds if desired.

With the ESP, a point to keep in mind is most SBCs (small board computers) typically have 3.3 Volt outputs. Pixel ICs are 5 Volt devices and there are situations where they cannot be correctly driven with the 3.3 Volt output. In that case a level shifter can be used between the SBC and string/strip. The WS2815 I mentioned is a 12 Volt device but still requires a 5 Volt Data Line input.

 

[whipsaw]

Thanks for all that info, TerryK, much appreciated.