Hi all, I posted some of this in other areas of the forum but it's best suited here.
For some time now I have been working on Arduino based E1.31 controllers. I have developed a 64 channel PWM based controller and now have a working Pixel controller too.
This one is based on an Arduino pro mini and an ENC28J60 Ethernet module so it is very small. The disadvantage with this is it's only really capable of about 2 universes before the Atmega328 runs out of SRAM.
I currently only have it set up with one universe and speed wise it is fine - I am using Vixen and have it at 10ms updates and it's smooth with no noticeable loss of packets.
Soon I will re-work the code to support 2 universes but in reality it may not have enough SRAM to support the full 1024 bytes needed for the array to hold pixel data (this is currently untested - The E1.31 packet will use about 640 bytes alone, minus whatever the code itself uses, whatever we have left is available for more pixels...)
In short, for those that are a little handy with a soldering iron and are prepared to learn just the very basics of arduino (A monkey could do it) then you have a minimum one universe pixel controller for about $10!

View: http://youtu.be/ekL2u8TyuLQ?list=UUkD4CgGfvFT39j5oZ5CNw0Q
Once I have it tested with more pixels I'll post the code here but if someone wants in early, let me know.
For some time now I have been working on Arduino based E1.31 controllers. I have developed a 64 channel PWM based controller and now have a working Pixel controller too.
This one is based on an Arduino pro mini and an ENC28J60 Ethernet module so it is very small. The disadvantage with this is it's only really capable of about 2 universes before the Atmega328 runs out of SRAM.
I currently only have it set up with one universe and speed wise it is fine - I am using Vixen and have it at 10ms updates and it's smooth with no noticeable loss of packets.
Soon I will re-work the code to support 2 universes but in reality it may not have enough SRAM to support the full 1024 bytes needed for the array to hold pixel data (this is currently untested - The E1.31 packet will use about 640 bytes alone, minus whatever the code itself uses, whatever we have left is available for more pixels...)
In short, for those that are a little handy with a soldering iron and are prepared to learn just the very basics of arduino (A monkey could do it) then you have a minimum one universe pixel controller for about $10!


View: http://youtu.be/ekL2u8TyuLQ?list=UUkD4CgGfvFT39j5oZ5CNw0Q
Once I have it tested with more pixels I'll post the code here but if someone wants in early, let me know.