
Chromatron Wi-Fi Pixel Controller - luu
http://chromatron.io/
======
theamk
This seems like way overcomplicated design - why do they need two CPUs? They
claim "real time control", but this doesn't check out: their main CPU,
esp8266, has a DMA that can emit stable protocol timings. And the higher level
effects don't care about millisecond or ten of jitter.

I am running two such simple strips right now, and it works very well.

~~~
leggomylibro
ESP8266s aren't very pleasant to work with, and in my experience it can be
hard to accomplish much in program logic while keeping the WiFi stable.

But the cottage industry around these addressable LED driver boards is getting
pretty ridiculous. The PixelBlaze already does a great job of controlling them
from an ESP8266. And the LEDs aren't that hard to use with generic hardware
like Arduinos, even for people with zero prior experience.

There's no doubt about it, this world caters to the hucksters and the
unrealistically optimistic.

~~~
jeffhuys
Regarding "in my experience it can be hard to accomplish much in program logic
while keeping the WiFi stable".

I've had the same; sorting a big list of numbers or doing any action that
takes a few seconds can make the WiFi unstable, disconnect, or not respond.

I'm curious though, there are some dual-core designs with ESP8266
compatibility out there, would that help?

~~~
fit2rule
I have no problem using coroutines to keep Wifi working fluidly on ESP8266.
This just requires attention, its not too difficult to keep the ESP8266
pumping data.

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moepstar
Anyone looking into this (seems you can't get your hands on the hardware just
now, skimming the comments?) may want to look int WLED...

All you need is a NanoMCU / ESP8266, a power source and LED-strips of you
choice... There even are iOS (and i think Android) apps to control the strips
via Wifi, options to sync N strips etc. etc...

[https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED](https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED)

~~~
moooo99
+1 for WLED. They have an Android app that works quite nicely. Apparently WLED
also implements ways to sync to systems like Philips Hue and offers
alternative interfaces like MQTT. The community is also great and will help
you out where they can.

------
ShakataGaNai
Very awesome demo. I want to do more DIY LED lighting in my office (because it
makes for a great video conference backdrop) and I am perfectly capable of
buying and programming ESP8266's or ESP32's.... But it's a PITA. Doing it
totally DIY is a lot of tinkering with a lot of different things (power, the
vagueries of LED strips you get from Aliexpress, etc).

I'd totally be down for buying like 5 of these units to test with, provided
they weren't unreasonably more expensive than what I'd expect to pay for an
ESP8266 and related gear.

~~~
detaro
I've heard good things about those (but no firsthand experience myself!):
[https://www.tindie.com/products/electromage/electromage-
pixe...](https://www.tindie.com/products/electromage/electromage-
pixelblaze-v2-wifi-led-controller/)

~~~
linsomniac
I've played with the Pixelblaze and it's pretty sweet. As far as going from
nothing to being able to control a string of LED lights with a series of pre-
programmed effects, it is really easy.

That said, I ended up abandoning the project I was going to use them for:
permanently installed Christmas lights that doubled as just normal outside
lighting when it wasn't a holiday. I ended up, just this weekend in fact,
installing just a white LED strip light for that. Which I just did on a whim
yesterday afternoon, after someone was prowling up the street looking for open
cars that morning.

~~~
bowmessage
What pain point(s) made you abandon the project? I like the idea!

~~~
linsomniac
Things kind of just spiraled out of control...

\- Wasn't clear if Pixelblaze with it's add on board could drive multiple
strips at high refresh rates, or I needed multiple pixelblaze. Then there are
synchronization issues.

\- If I'm gonna do that, I might as well go with one of those Falcon LED
controllers that can do shows, for $200.

\- I have power in the garage at one end of the house, but need to branch off
the middle of the house. But to get acceptable voltage drop, I'd probably need
to run 12/2, but I need to figure out DC code, or I need to find a place to
stow the power supply.

\- I'd like to use some or all of them as a "porch light", but just switching
off/on had some issue. I don't recall, it either took a long time to get to
the point where the lights were on, or required also poking the control port
or something.

\- And it was maybe 6 weeks from Christmas with a lot of building to do to get
there.

If I end up deciding to do it, I might install a dual track with white non-
addressable strip AND the color addressable AND go with the Falcon controller.
Maybe running conduit from the center of the house into the closet, where I
put the power supply and Falcon. I recently ran a receptacle into it to drive
the LED light strip that is in there, because that closet was a dark pit that
you couldn't find anything in, so that makes it a bit easier than it was last
holidays.

~~~
bowmessage
Wow, well thought out post! Thank you for the tips, future me will benefit
greatly.

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zeva
seems like this may no longer be in production.
[https://kickstarter.com/projects/1286098094/chromatron-
wifi-...](https://kickstarter.com/projects/1286098094/chromatron-wifi-pixel-
controller)
[https://www.tindie.com/products/readmodifywrite/chromatron-w...](https://www.tindie.com/products/readmodifywrite/chromatron-
wifi-led-pixel-controller/)

~~~
ShakataGaNai
Awww, that's very unfortunate. Found the repo (
[https://github.com/sapphireos/chromatron](https://github.com/sapphireos/chromatron)
) since it's open source and there are no commits in the last 2 years.

~~~
readmodifywrite
Hi! I'm the project creator. While it's true the Kickstarter boards have all
sold out, the project is still alive and well. Check out the dev and esp8266
branches, there's commits as of today ;-)

My long term goal for this year is to get a port running on some stock ESP8266
boards (such as NodeMCU and the Adafruit Feather Huzzah). My original hardware
design was too complex to build in a cost effective way, but I'd really like
to get the software in the hands of those who are interested.

------
paranoidrobot
Did I just miss it, or is there no information about price, where to get it,
whether it's available now, etc?

It looks interesting, and if it were the right price I might actually want
one.

As far as I can tell there's only the signup for more info (no, thanks) - or
some links to github and some social media.

~~~
readmodifywrite
Hi, project creator here. Sadly, the poster was a little behind on catching
this... The Kickstarter boards shipped over 2 years ago, and as the hardware
didn't really sell well after that, it's mostly just a personal project that
this point.

That being said, I am actively working on a port for some stock ESP8266 boards
(Adafruit Feather, NodeMCU, etc). I don't really want to sell hardware, but
I'd love to see someone else using the software.

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dmos62
A custom virtual machine and wifi. As a user, I'd much more appreciate
exercises of modularity than featurefullness. Not that I don't sympathize with
the maker. Over-engineering can be fun.

~~~
readmodifywrite
Over-engineering is indeed fun - that was part of the point of the project, it
was (and remains) a labor of love.

Modularity was actually a design consideration I really struggled with, but at
the end of the day, I realized I didn't want to do just another Arduino clone
where you put the whole thing together yourself. I designed Chromatron under
the assumption that you'd eventually end up with a lot of them, in which case
the Wifi and live coding are really useful features - I wanted and all-in-one
solution. But for most people who only need 1 or 2 projects, it's overkill. I
think that's part of the reason it didn't sell that well.

~~~
dmos62
Easy modularity can be hard, so can't blame you for going for an AIO.

------
jkestner
I have two of these. Way faster than an Arduino if you just want to set up
some dynamic lighting, and still plenty of room for tinkering.

~~~
lepouet
where did you buy it ?

~~~
jkestner
The Kickstarter.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1286098094/chromatron-w...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1286098094/chromatron-
wifi-pixel-controller)

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tootie
I love that it has a terminal block. Secure connection and no soldering.

------
person_of_color
Why is there a 300 LED limit?

~~~
readmodifywrite
Memory and the available CPU time to run the virtual machine. There's also a
fader engine to do timed fades per pixel, that eats a fair amount of RAM as
well (but it's a nice to have).

It was designed for smaller, but highly dynamic, projects. I figured large
scale installations were already well served in the DMX/pixel mapping space.

------
gonesilent
This one needs some love www.heroicrobotics.com PixelPusher

------
fit2rule
I worked with Wizard23 to produce something similar, called the MagicShifter:

[http://magicshifter.net/](http://magicshifter.net/)

Its an open source, portable battery powered pocketable light synthesiser with
multiple built-in programs for doing a variety of different things - from
Persistence of Vision effects (very popular), to accelerometer-based level
meters, vibration visualisers, and disco/strobe effects.

I added MIDI to it - meaning the whole thing can be sync'ed over rtpMIDI (MIDI
over Wifi is awesome and supported out of the box by most operating systems),
and I also built an Arpeggiator for it too - meaning you can have your dancers
wired up with shifters on their bodies, an Arpeggiator on stage with you on
your synth stacks, and MagicShifters all over the place synchronised to your
drum machine. ;)

We (Phillip, the hardware inventor, and myself the software guy) also designed
the latest-gen MS3000 PCB to be easily useful for longer LED strip
experiments, and included both 5v and 3.3v onboard, with a UART breakout, for
extra hacking purposes - wire it up to a console and use it as a build
indicator, or just use plain old Wifi too. We have a light strip with 200
LED's wired up to a single MagicShifter and used it to create a wall clock.
Pins for wiring up longer strips are exposed on one end of the board, and you
can solder the strips directly without requiring further driver hardware -
just change the constants in the MS3KOS to tell it how many LED's you're
driving ..

EDIT: Have a look at the PCB here:

[https://magicshifter.github.io/magicshifter.net/img/new/ms30...](https://magicshifter.github.io/magicshifter.net/img/new/ms3000-pcb-
and-assembled.jpg)

You can see the UART breakout as well as the 4 contact points for longer LED
strips...

It includes a REST-based interface for changing the LED effects modes, as well
as presenting a web-based Pixel Editor to create your own POV images.

Sources here (100% open source) for anyone who might glean some use out of our
project:

[https://github.com/magicshifter](https://github.com/magicshifter)

Some other nice demo videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xoYjA06XkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xoYjA06XkQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syP8_lccIQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syP8_lccIQA)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shac_DN2ZrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shac_DN2ZrU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcGrRuRuhYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcGrRuRuhYU)

EDIT: you can get an MS3000 from
[http://hackerspaceshop.com](http://hackerspaceshop.com) ..

