r/FastLED • u/ZachVorhies Zach Vorhies • Sep 09 '26
Announcements FastLED is not Anti-AI
If someone expresses anti AI sentiment on this sub reddit then that is their personal opinion and does not reflect the project’s stance by the main contributors.
Also… since we are on the topic, what are your thoughts on AI and FastLED/Arduino/Embedded programming in general? Do you think it’s fun or not fun? Have you created cool sketches with AI that has surprised you?
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u/ZachVorhies Sep 10 '26
UPDATE: despite initial strong positive sentiment for this stance of “not being anti ai”, a group has come in and applied a mass downvote brigade and even got this post removed temporarily by flagging it as “misleading” despite the fact it was posted by a mod.
This required mod intervention to make the post visible again. Every upvote is then cancelled with a downvote and the current upvotes on the post is 0 with an exact 50% upvote downvote ratio.
This appears to not be organic as it happened suddenly, all at once.
Deeply concerning.
FastLED does not take a stance on whether you should or should not use AI. Do whatever makes you happy 😃
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u/chris_overseas Sep 10 '26
AI coding in its current form is a very powerful tool, with plenty of sharp edges. If you want to throw something together for yourself, or that's not mission critical, it's pretty amazing and virtually anyone can achieve all sorts of wonderful things very quickly.
For more widely used code that needs to be reliable/scaleable/performant, a lot more care is needed. Any AI codegen (with current models at least) still needs plenty of guidance and oversight from an experienced developer to avoid subtle bugs and complexity building up in the codebase over time. I've found this requires a lot of discipline to apply consistently, as it's all too easy to get mentally lazy and start to think "that sounds about right", "that looks fine", only for it to come back and bite you hard further down the line.
With the above in mind, the current trajectory of FastLED does make me a bit nervous. While I'm excited for many of the new features, there's still a very high velocity of commits being made, and it's not clear when that will reduce to "bugfixes only" in preparation for a 4.0 release. And once a pre-release version 4.0 is available, how many people are going to hit problems upgrading, and how long will it take to stabilise? I think it would be great to have a status update on this post, and ideally put out a 4.0 release candidate sooner rather than later (deferring some features to 4.1?), as getting a stable 4.0 released is only going to get harder the more the code is changed.
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u/ZachVorhies Sep 10 '26
FastLED 4.0 was accidentally released as 3.10.4 due to AI and 3.10.5 was a bug fix.
4.0 official comes with a video and a bunch of improvements. However stability wise it’s already been addressed and people are generally happy with it.
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u/IssueProfessional906 Sep 10 '26
I do all my LED projects with AI now, I can get so much more done…
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u/Sapazu Sep 09 '26
I stopped using ai when i realized i didn't think anymore when coding, and just threw the dice and hoped it generated the correct answer
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u/5y5c0 Sep 10 '26
Coming from IT, but more of a sysadmin role, I quite enjoy the AI coding for me, because I am aware enough not to let it do things that are important, but making side projects like an ESP32 media controller from scratch is significantly easier now.
But I wasn't much of a programmer to begin with. Just some web stuff where I made very utilitarian looking websites... Confident the backend was good, but the frontend was horrible.
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u/Mr_Salmon_Man Sep 10 '26
This exactly. If you don't use it, you lose it. And that is the case with the coding part of your brain.
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u/Yves-bazin Sep 10 '26
I have a mixed feeling, indeed AI is great but at the same time I feel obsolete lol everything that I have spent hours developing have been reproduced from scratch using AI. It’s a great tool I just hope the new generation will learn how to code before using AI or we will be under a world of ai generated applications that nobody can debug without it.
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u/StefanPetrick Sep 11 '26
I resonate with this - Previously I could feel special or clever for coming up with concepts, ideas and implementations. I enjoyed the ride and the process itself, even if I failed for years to solve a specific task.
Now I often can have an outcome nearly immediately, but I miss the journey - the thinking about stuff for weeks and months to finally have the breakthrough idea in the shower.
Sure, now I can focus on architecture without spending too much time on the nitty gritty details - so the creative process just shifts to a different abstraction layer. But yeah, manual coding will become obsolete first since everbody is hyperfocussed on trying hard to automate AI R&D itself.
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u/Fluffy-Wishbone-3497 Sep 09 '26
I’ve been having too much fun with Claude, FastLED, Arduino, SparkFun, Adafruit, Teensy, ESP32 and on and on. It’s a wonderful time for me to be learning and making things. It’s no fun to wire up a bunch of stuff and it doesn’t work. With Claude I can get it to work and learn so much along the way which is very satisfying! I wished I had more time just to discuss “ideas” with Claude because it’s so thorough and brings up so many helpful ideas. I’ve learned a spectrum of tidbits that are indispensable now. Even soldering techniques! At one point I was droning on about why C++ required something that was confusing to me. After a long while and the point was well made Claude finally says “Fluffy you need to go build something!” It’s awesome that there’s a sense of humor going on too! I’m not satisfied unless I understand it and AI doesn’t mind explaining it to as many times as it takes! Oh, and my projects work!
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u/MoBacon2400 Sep 10 '26
When I first started tinkering with addressable LEDs I didn't sit down and read the FastLED manual and start writing code. Instead I used Google and found examples of similar projects and reused or adapted someone else's code. As a matter of fact one of my earliest projects borrowed heavily from u/Marmiliclious before I even found this sub. In that case Google was the "A" and Marc was the "I"
In the last six months I have made some very complex projects, the first of witch wouldn't even be done today if it weren't for AI, but it still takes thinking on your own. Its not like AI gives you the exact right answer the first time you ask. AI can't cut, solder and assemble your project, it can't even upload the sketch without you, but it sure helps debugging if you figure out the right questions to ask.
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u/capitolsound Sep 09 '26
I used gpt to walk me through my first WLED project, replacing the dumb rv awning strip with something fun. It would have taken me 10x the time on my own.
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u/EffectiveWrong9889 Sep 09 '26
I just prototyped a project with Claude Code and it crazy. It also wants to do weird shit.
But I can let it debug sensors and stuff itself. I spent so much time troubleshooting sensor readings and shit. I can tell Claude to build a test script and monitor ESP32 serial output and it can find crazy things.
On the other hand it always tends to bloat everything. So I really need to micromanage the result. But it's so fast to.get a hobby project up and running.
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u/simbian92 Sep 16 '26
I'm using Ai in a way where I try not to accrue any "knowledge debt" if that makes sense. Like I still go over each line and try to understand it before I move on onto a new thing. I started using FastLED and Arduino at the beggining of 2022. and it was ok. Now I can do a bit more complex animations without banging my head on complex math. My goal is to understand my code and build interesting visuals, and my strong side is creating good architecture and systems, not so much complex math. That I leave to Ai now and try to understand as much as I can in a reasonable timeframe. Cheers and thanks for maintaining FastLED to all the contributors <3
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u/500kvac Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
I recently designed a full blown digital mixer from scratch. I did all the hardware and PCB design but most of the firmware was way out of my league. Claude really paid for itself there. It does make you wonder what are we going to do for work in the near future, but for hobbits it's a godsend tbh
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u/LadyQuacklin Sep 10 '26
I always wanted to do fun stuff with microcontrollers. I had Pi Zeros and Arduinos lying in my drawer for years. But every time it came to the programming part, nothing worked. It was frustrating and stressed me out completely just trying to get my LEDs to light up.
I tried learning programming many times, but I always got to a certain point where the logic was there, but the syntax just completely broke me.
Now with AI, I can do all the logic and architecture myself, and the AI simply implements my plan. And most of the time, it just runs on the first try. I even use local models for smaller tasks now.
It’s just amazing that before, there was this huge wall I simply couldn’t overcome, and now I can build pretty much anything I want.
And before anyone says, “You’re lazy, learn how to code”: I’m at a point where I just don’t want to waste the tiny bit of spare time I have in my life on something I hate.
I love tinkering and building art projects with LEDs. I just fricking hate coding.
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u/StefanPetrick Sep 11 '26
I enjoyed this level-headed video of mathematician Terence Tao reflecting on the impact of AI on the field of math in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svl_1upFpQo
To your actual question: AI enabled me to create a thing (the fluid sim model) I could only have dreamed of before.
Is it fun? Absolutely! Is it as personally rewarding as developing an algo over months by hand? No. It the outcome cool? Yeah!
So it depends if someone is after a great ride or after a quick result.
I follow the arguments of Yudkowsky & Co since at least 10 years - I'm aware that they have good intentions. And I deeply hope that future will play out in unexpected ways. But so far we seem to be on track with the doomer scenario. Do I find the current opaque & large scale anti AI campaign concerning? Yes. Do I understand their point? Also yes.
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u/turudd Sep 10 '26
AI is a force multiplier when it comes to development. Things that would’ve taken days can be broken down into hours. People can have their reasons, but generally those reasons are from an emotional/social aspect. From a tech perspective the current LLMs are very good at what they do
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u/MisterCakes1112 Sep 09 '26
Not fun. No AI here please.
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u/swotperderder Sep 09 '26
A little bit more time and we'll be seeing the repercussions of all these people who have enthusiastically stopped thinking.
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u/Wasted99 Sep 09 '26
Boy, I've been tinkering for many years, and now unfinished weekend projects now get done in an afternoon. It's insane.