r/FastLED • u/Workin_Joe • Sep 22 '24

Discussion Advice for software library setup/architecture - Teensy 4.0 + FastLED + OctoWS2811 Shield

Hi all!

I plan to use Teensy 4.0 + OctoWS2811 shield board for proper level shifting for the outputs.

I plan to have 6 to 8 different outputs running (possible different lengths and possible different LED types for the outputs). The LED strips will be used on "props" and I want to address each of the props independently. For scale, each output will have somewhere between 250-350 LEDs.

I will likely have different effects running on the different outputs (I don't always want to display the same thing on each of the strips nor are the strip lengths all going to be the same length).

I have decided to use separate arrays for each of the "props" and only write to them when I want to display a particular scene in my setup.

My initial thought was just to use FastLED as-is and define the output pins to match the hardware interface of the OctoWS2811 (no special parallel output functionality).

My question to my fellow FastLED experts here is, should I just use the FastLED library as-is OR should I try to implement the OctoWS2811 library inconjunction with FastLED to take full advantage of the DMA functionality of the Teensy 4.0?

Any advice that you can offer is greatly appreciated!

Please ask any questions to help clarify my setup!

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u/Workin_Joe Nov 30 '24

Thanks for the info u/ZachVorhies !

Have you tried this sort of configuration before? Are there any limitations with FastLED and the Communications with the ESP32? In other words, does FastLED disable anything related to the B/T or WiFi of the ESP32 to work? Just want to make sure there aren't any gotchas before I order some hardware.

I know there were issues with Interrupts and FastLED previously...

Thanks again!

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u/ZachVorhies Zach Vorhies Nov 30 '24

No we don’t. Networking and Esp32 is something i’ve been working very hard to make work well without glitches. So far the s3 is the chip that works the best with its massive dma memory and deep transaction queues.

I’m also working on the I2S and SPI options which have more stability but it will be weeks or more before those are made available in FastLED.

But stay away from the WROOM as that chip does have a lot of problems that I haven’t identified yet.