DEP - Droid Escape Pod

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I am part of the Droidsmiths Union, and I have multiple Proffie sabers. We carry around these DEPs in the park (which are made out of cat carriers), and we add LED lights of some kind. Some do basic color changing 5v leds, some have done Arduino setups for more movement. A couple have added bluetooth speakers, or separate audio options. I am wanting to do a full proffie setup will 144 led style strips.

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To just do a test, I want to run a single 3.3ft led strip across the top and down the sides. Would it be easier to divide the strip up into two shorter sections, starting at the bottom, and meeting at the top, or am I ok having it just be a single strip? If I want effects from the “bottom to the top” it would be like a blade doing something on it’s strips from the top and bottom to the center. Does that make sense?

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Basically, most of the effects, I want to start at bottom of yellow strips and come up to center. I am thinking its better to just have the one strip.

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Using a single 144px or two separate 72, is up to your preference. The main difference is in cable routing. I would tend to think that you can do a single strip and handle any division with subblade.

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Another question. I want to power this for as long as possible. I see the proffie wants a max of 4.5volts. I use a massive 5v rechargable inside right now to power all the USB stuff. Is that too much for the board?
Could I power the LEDs off the 5v, and use a 18650 for the board? (I would prefer everything running off the 5v)

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The USB on the board takes 5v anyway, you could just use that to power it, then run the LEDs directly off battery. Run the negative line through the LED pads and connect the board BATT(-) to your source negative and it should be good. Someone else can chime in to confirm I’m not crazy.

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USB only supplies 500mA, while the Proffie takes four to six times that. I would simply put a stepdown regulator if you have the space. And I can’t recall which, but some part of Proffie can’t take 5V, so I wouldn’t do that. A single strip should never do more than 7.5A, so a 10A stepdown should sufice for all. I don’t know how to use a step down on a single wire, but if you could run the stepdown only on the Proffie’s positive connection, you will save a lot of wiring and reduce the size of the transformer significantly. May be @profezzorn can chip in?

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Huh? The board runs just fine on USB power, and a 500mA limit would be dependant on the supply.

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The big power draw is from the volume booster. The board works, but sound is clipped when fed by USB.
PD: The four wire USB that Proffie uses (i.e. NOT USB-C) only supplies 500mA, a full USB-C implementation can get a lot more. But the internal USB subsystem of Proffie can’t down convert more than 500mA.

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Good point, although I didn’t see a sound requirement.

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Big audio requirements! lol

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The 4.5 volts listed on the web page is a design specification, not an actual limit.
Proffieboards work just fine up to 5.5 volts, no step-down is needed.
Getting enough amps for the neopixels from a USB battery pack is going to be hard though.
A couple of 21700s hooked up in parallel might be better for powering the neopixels.
(Or you could get a pre-made battery pack intended for an RC car or something, just make sure the batteries are hooked up in parallel, not series…)

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Alrighty! Maybe someone can help with the “division” of my LED strip. I wired it as a solid 144 strip. Starts on one end of the bottom and wraps around the top. How can I treat it as two separate strips ending in the center? So both “ends” move to the center.

Edited to add: Zooks like it might be best handled by the font profile? I am adding an additional strip too for the inside lights.

I have too many questions about changing the buttons/configuration I think. While I want some clash sounds, I don’t want to twist, or position the board to change things. It’s basically mounted inside the carrier and can’t really be moved.

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Divided strips are called subblades. Info here:

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So two 144 strips would look like this?

BladeConfig blades[] = { { 0, SubBlade(144, 287, WS281XBladePtr<288, bladePin, Color8::GRB, PowerPINS<bladePowerPin2, bladePowerPin3, bladePowerPin5>>()), SubBlade(0, 143, NULL), CONFIGARRAY(presets), }

?
I am thinking I can handle the split effects with fonts. Center out kinda stuff would work for that. I am thinking inside strip and outside strip and being able to control with different fonts.

I also have to kill all movement based controls. I have a two button setup but can’t really rotate this to control options.

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I don’t think you need bladePowerPin5, if you’re running your (-) to LED2/3.

Your config will need 2 styles per preset, and I think this sets it up so that the first style will control LEDs 144-287, and the second controls 0-143.

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Use this for your second sub blade to reverse the order. Can use the same blade style with each half then

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Are the two strips wire in parallel or series? If parallel then your total pixels is 144 rather than 288 and you’d halve thst for your sub blades so 0,71 and 72,143

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It’s indented a bit weird, but looks right to me.
A few things:

  1. you might want to use SubBladeReverse for one of the blades
  2. It’s weird to pair LED2, 3 and 5 together, are you sure that’s what you want? (Two LED pads is sufficient to drive 288 LEDs.)
  3. Don’t forget to change maxLedsPerStrip to 288.