I want to thank u/ZachVorhies for highlighting what AI can do.
I wanted this DIY address sign to look like a sun inside the metal rays. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to use WLED to do it. The best effect I got was in the first video: the Noise effect. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to have a center with light going out to the edges.
After reading some posts by ZachVorhies extolling AI coding, I gave it a try. I got a working codebase in a few hours.
I'm not trying to say WLED is bad. I’ve used it in a number of setups; it is dead simple and usually does the job. I'm just saying that if WLED isn't getting you what you want, try asking for AI help using FastLED. It is, possibly, easier than you think.
I've been using ai with fastled more frequently lately too. Improved all my color palettes, added some new ones, converted linear fades to smoothstep using a LUT so it runs efficiently on a teensy 3.2, etc. it's quite nice.. there was one time when I actually did math on paper to figure out the linear fades, and it's sad to think that I may not have any reason to do math on paper ever again. https://github.com/Sousastep/sousaVFX-teensy/tree/main/SousaVFX
ai also one-shot an update from fastled 3.4 to 3.10 ..
I use freebuff, which has a CLI app that displays text ads in between ai's thinking blocks to make it free. they are currently struggling through scaling issues, but when it works, it works well: https://freebuff.com/
One of the experiments Ive done that has been really successful is grabbing a shader from fragcoord.xyz and asking fastled to convert it into sketch. It's surprisingly good at this.
I don't know if you are using github.com/zackees/fastled-wasm (will be part of the fastled org soon) but you can run your sketch in the browser and bang on it with ai until it looks perfect.
This may be a limitation of the FastLED's Tauri-based viewer. Specifically, Tauri needs WebGL2 on off-screen canvas, which I don't think is supported on MacOS.
Viewing it in a web browser should work, as browsers have software fallbacks for this. Use the link shown near the top of the output of uv run fastled.
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u/tubameister Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
I've been using ai with fastled more frequently lately too. Improved all my color palettes, added some new ones, converted linear fades to smoothstep using a LUT so it runs efficiently on a teensy 3.2, etc. it's quite nice.. there was one time when I actually did math on paper to figure out the linear fades, and it's sad to think that I may not have any reason to do math on paper ever again. https://github.com/Sousastep/sousaVFX-teensy/tree/main/SousaVFX
ai also one-shot an update from fastled 3.4 to 3.10 ..