Driving addresable leds

Hardware
1

Hi! Im pretty new to work with light and mapping pixels to fixtures. I want eventually to map 3D content to led stripes for building a volumetric display 3d display / ledcube. (I might start in 2D)

If I want to build it myself, would it be enough to buy some kind of addresable ledstripe White Tri-Color LED Strip - Addressable, Sealed (1m) - COM-13898 - SparkFun Electronics

1 artnet device for example:
https://www.amazon.com/70405-Ethernet-Lighting-Controller-Interface/dp/B072XY2PGV
(Would like to have a cheaper one though)

Then maybe a stupid question but how do I drive the leds? :slight_smile:

And then in TD I map my pixels to the corresponding channel (have to investigate this a bit further but have some ideas on how to do this).

So my question is basically: what hardware setup do I need for driving my leds?

2

Heya, as you noted the are many ways to control LEDs.

This thread is a goldmine of information for doing it on the cheap/diy. Read the entire thing as lots of working code gets posted the further you get: Hitting bottleneck controlling close to 4,000 LEDs! - #48 by thegladscientist

3

Thanks för reply! Interesting thread!
But any input / example of a setup:

TD → artnet → ?? → adressable ledstripe

Thanks

4

The thing you linked to only gets you halfway there (Art-Net to DMX) you should skip serial DMX and go straight from Art-Net to LED control.

Advatek makes plenty of controllers to do this on a larger scale, but if you want the cheapest easiest to acquire thing out there, I’d recommend DMXKing:

https://www.amazon.com/DMXking-LeDMX4-PRO-5V-Pro/dp/B019SFU4MG

5

Thanks. Looks good. However seems to be hard to find in europe. Any other recommendations similliar to advatek?

But how do I drive the leds if Im using for example are using the entecc interface linked above? What do I need more to physically connect the ledsstripes?

6

If you wanted to use that specific Entecc DMX box then you will need a pixel controller to translate the DMX back into something your particular LED strips understand. You would wire the LED strips directly to the translator board.

Entecc also makes products for pixel control:

Really, you should look for something like the Advatek/DMXKing that takes in Artnet over the network. That way you don’t need another box. It’s just TD>>>Network Cable(Artnet)>>>LED Controller~LED Strips.