Amazing! I have made the 10x10 matrix following Great Scott's video as a beginner project. It was long and tedious, but I did learn tons. I have had a few problems with the matrix since then (mostly because of my poor soldering job and figured that I could make a bigger (16 x 16) matrix without all the individual led soldering. Amazing to find your video and project. That will surely help me when I get stuck! Thanks a lot!
No worries, glad you've found it useful! Don't forget to check out the next two videos in the series for adding some games to it once you have it built.
@@ScottMarley I have! Thanks so much for sharing your work with us. I really enjoyed the quality and clarity of your explanations. Thanks as well for making your files accessible on github. The code/software aspect of the project looks a lot more advanced to what I am comfortable with but it will be a great learning opportunity hopefully!
I have been making LED signs for years. I will try the 3d printed spacers to see if my signs look better. I have also just discovered frosted glass spray paint for a diffuser!
Just discovered this video. A few years ago I spent months building a 30 x 60 WS2812 matrix using the biggest Arduino at the time b/c of the memory. I'd love to convert it to ESP32 using this method.
Pretty neat result, thanks for sharing it with us. But I don't understand how it can be a 25x25 cm box. I have 60led/m in my led strip. So it's like 27 cm for 16 leds. At first I thought my lane was different. Maybe your led is 96led/m. So it fits in 25cm. But when I watched it again and looked at the led gaps I assumed our strips were almost identical. The 28.6cm separator file you shared in the second video confirms this. the problem starts here😂 There is no 30x30 deep box on the internet.
Thank you Scott Marley for producing all these wonderful videos. They are super helpful and inspiring. I just devoured all your FastLED tutorials and ordered all the components to make this matrix. I had one question though: what type of cardboard did you use for the grid, what is the thickness of the cardboard?
In this video I'm using 3mm black foamboard, which worked ok, but I did get a bit of light leaking through as the cuts were not perfectly straight. Later, I re-made the grid from 3mm plywood laser cut at the local hackspace. This worked much better as it was cut much more accurately.
@@ScottMarley Thanks for the reply! A friend of me also has his own lasercutter, so I will visit him to make the the grid. I will get 3 mm plywood than (and maybe also 3 mm cardboard and see how that result works out).
There is an illustrator file for the grid in the GitHub linked from part 2 of this video. The pattern will change though depending on the size of the frame.
I have what I'm sure is a dumb question. I have some ws2812b at 60 per metre. Which gives of course a distance of 16.7mm from the start of one led to the start of the next (1000mm / 60 = 16.67mm between each led). However, using the same frame, there is no way you can get 16 in as 16 * 16.7mm is 26.7cm and therefore larger than the 25cm frame. Do you have a link to the specific led strip you bought? In the mean time I'm going to make one which is 13x13. Thanks
Not a dumb question at all! 250mm x 250mm is the size of the cutout inside the white card mount. I had to use a craft knife to cut this card a few mm from all inside edges to make the hole 267mm wide. The LED strips I used are standard, and like yours have a spacing of 16.6mm. Let me know if this explanation makes sense!
Scott Marley I clearly bought the wrong frame. The inside of my frame is 250mm x 250mm but the mount is only 200x200. Oh well. I wonder if yours is the 300x300 version
@@andymonks7126 ah crap, you're right, it was the 30x30. Sorry for making you buy the wrong frame! I'll edit the description now, and thanks for letting me know!
Scott Marley no problems. Just means I have a 13x13 practice one. You might want to update the link to the correct size. Just waiting for my copper tape to arrive now to wire the power and ground up. Anyway great couple of videos. Thanks
Thank you very much for your video. Where did you have the cardboard strips lasered and what did it cost? I wouldn't know what kind of company could do that.
I lasered the wood at a local hackspace, only had to pay for the plywood which was about £3. It would cost a lot more if you had a company do it for you.
No, it ran fine without one. In fact I've never had to use one in all of my ESP projects. Some people do though, no idea why it works for some and not others!
Hi bro. Thanks a lot for the tutorial. I leave you some questions. it works with artnet protocol too? Can you please tell me specs of power supply? (Volt/amp) In order to power up the lolin v3 that i have, can i use the same power supply of the ledstripe using Vin pins? Thanks
When using the Arduino Nano or Uno via usb I always have, #define MAX_AMPS 500 //value in milliamps and #define VOLTS 5. FastLED.setMaxPowerInVoltsAndMilliamps(VOLTS, MAX_AMPS); in the set-up. Safety.
Nice video! Thanks! I'm trying to control small ws2812b matrix (8x8) using ESP32 but pixels doesn't show correctly... Also tried with level shifters but same results... Do you have any advice?
I'm afraid I have no idea what it could be without knowing a lot more about the problem. Although in theory the lights need a 5V signal, I've never had a problem using the 3V3 output from the ESP32 to drive them without level shifters.
I haven't had any issues, I powered it from a standard USB battery pack. It runs for about 8-10 hours on my 20,000mah pack depending on their brightness you use.
@@ScottMarley Hi again scott, my esp32 just arrived and I'm wondering if you are just using a usb to power esp32 and the power comes from the esp32 for the leds
@@ScottMarley And when it comes to ESP can we provide power to Led via the microcontroller like we can in Arduino Nano/Uno ? I mean esp is 3.3v and nano/uno are 5v so just a thought
@@sagarmgandhi if you only have a few LEDs, you can power them from the 5V pin on the ESP. Any more than that and you will want a proper power supply. The data pin to the LEDs from the ESP is at 3.3V rather than 5V. If you want to do it 100% correctly you should use a level shifter to change the 3.3V signal to 5V, but I've found the data works fine at 3.3V.
@@ScottMarley Thank You for taking time to explain. I am still watching videos on ESP and Nano tp understand things before i dive into making it. There is so much that can be done and its so cool, but i am more interested in the spectrum analyzer you made using ESP and FFT library
@@ScottMarley can ya share the files for the laser cutter, so that i can get a service to the cardboard matrix for me. NVM i found those on github, thanks
The project is awesome :) Now I'm planing to similar on my own. How do you power supply your matrix? 16x16 LEDs need pretty much Amps to work on a full brightness. Do you have a 15 A external power supply or just making sure that your matrix brightness is lowered to some level?
Hi, please show it off when you have completed it! Have a look at my next video here: ua-cam.com/video/cqmWfE1DSyM/v-deo.html and the one afterwards here: ua-cam.com/video/apmOSQmeKJA/v-deo.html for more information, but in my latest code I use the FastLED command FastLED.setMaxPowerInVoltsAndMilliamps(5,1000); Change the '1000' to however many mA you would like to limit it to. While I'm writing code for it, I set it to 1000, then it runs happily from the USB port on my laptop. When I want to show it off somewhere, I connect it to a standard USB power bank and change it to 2000mA which is more than bright enough unless you're in daylight. I've had it run for over 10 hours on a 20,000mAh pack as it's not drawing 2A most of the time anyway. PS, there's no need to run WB2812B LEDs at full brightness anyway usually. 200 looks almost as bright as 255 and drawns way less current.
@@witastwosz360 in this video the whole thing is running from the usb port on my laptop, so definitely less than 200. It was a while back so I can't tell you exactly. Most likely to be around 100 ish.
@@ScottMarley thx sir. i wanna build a 16x20 matrix. i m not sure, if the memory of arduino uno is enough. can you tell, how much memory your tetris with all external libraries take, splitted in program code and variables? i asume the 2k sram of the uno could be hardly enough, but i dont know, what extra memory the libraries take.
That's not trivial (and impossible to answer in a UA-cam comment), but it's all just mathematics at the end of the day! Look up how to draw circles using trigonometry or use a different library that does that for you. github.com/AaronLiddiment/LEDMatrix would be one option. Or go with Adafruit's gfx library instead of FastLED.
@@АндрейМухин-м2я that looks very cool, it's using Jinx software running on a laptop though. It would be a fair bit of work to port that over to run on a microcontroller such as the ESP32.
This is the clearest and simplest explanation of the LED matrix idea that I've seen, and with a very pretty result! Thank you Scott
Amazing! I have made the 10x10 matrix following Great Scott's video as a beginner project. It was long and tedious, but I did learn tons. I have had a few problems with the matrix since then (mostly because of my poor soldering job and figured that I could make a bigger (16 x 16) matrix without all the individual led soldering.
Amazing to find your video and project. That will surely help me when I get stuck! Thanks a lot!
No worries, glad you've found it useful! Don't forget to check out the next two videos in the series for adding some games to it once you have it built.
@@ScottMarley I have! Thanks so much for sharing your work with us. I really enjoyed the quality and clarity of your explanations. Thanks as well for making your files accessible on github. The code/software aspect of the project looks a lot more advanced to what I am comfortable with but it will be a great learning opportunity hopefully!
I have been making LED signs for years. I will try the 3d printed spacers to see if my signs look better. I have also just discovered frosted glass spray paint for a diffuser!
Thank you for your clear, logical, well-presented videos, I find them extremely interesting and helpful!
Just discovered your channel and wanted to say thanks. Your WS2812 VU meter is the perfect thing I was looking for to put on the back of my monitor.
Glad I could help!
Just discovered this video. A few years ago I spent months building a 30 x 60 WS2812 matrix using the biggest Arduino at the time b/c of the memory. I'd love to convert it to ESP32 using this method.
Scott, this is great. I'm definitely going to do something similar next time around.
This one also looks fantastic!
Pretty neat result, thanks for sharing it with us. But I don't understand how it can be a 25x25 cm box. I have 60led/m in my led strip. So it's like 27 cm for 16 leds. At first I thought my lane was different. Maybe your led is 96led/m. So it fits in 25cm. But when I watched it again and looked at the led gaps I assumed our strips were almost identical. The 28.6cm separator file you shared in the second video confirms this.
the problem starts here😂 There is no 30x30 deep box on the internet.
I build my matrix based on your. Thanks!
Thank you Scott Marley for producing all these wonderful videos. They are super helpful and inspiring. I just devoured all your FastLED tutorials and ordered all the components to make this matrix. I had one question though: what type of cardboard did you use for the grid, what is the thickness of the cardboard?
In this video I'm using 3mm black foamboard, which worked ok, but I did get a bit of light leaking through as the cuts were not perfectly straight. Later, I re-made the grid from 3mm plywood laser cut at the local hackspace. This worked much better as it was cut much more accurately.
@@ScottMarley Thanks for the reply! A friend of me also has his own lasercutter, so I will visit him to make the the grid. I will get 3 mm plywood than (and maybe also 3 mm cardboard and see how that result works out).
Nicely done! I've been building a few matrices like this recently. Thanks for the tip about the hobbycraft frames! ;)
Beautiful and beautifully made 😍😍😍😍
Great video. Thank you.
do you have a tutorial about fast led and how to upload it to the esp32? I'm kinda new and self taught.
Nicely done Scott, however I do find the audio quite low.
You are correct, I didn't really know what I was doing when I made this video! Hopefully my more recent ones are better.
Awesome tutorial! Thanks
Great vid! What are the actual dimensions with the frame? And how many meters of WS2812 did you use?
60 led per meter have 1.7cm between each led.. that 27.2 only for the visible part of the frame.. which you said is 25X25... am i missing something?
Love this. Is there a 'pattern' for the grid components you made? Wondering if they could be 3d printed.
There is an illustrator file for the grid in the GitHub linked from part 2 of this video. The pattern will change though depending on the size of the frame.
@@ScottMarley thanks for that. I’ll check it out.
Hi Scott, which part of the code handle the wiring direction? I kept the arrows pointing in the same direction for all leds. Thanks
I have what I'm sure is a dumb question. I have some ws2812b at 60 per metre. Which gives of course a distance of 16.7mm from the start of one led to the start of the next (1000mm / 60 = 16.67mm between each led). However, using the same frame, there is no way you can get 16 in as 16 * 16.7mm is 26.7cm and therefore larger than the 25cm frame. Do you have a link to the specific led strip you bought? In the mean time I'm going to make one which is 13x13. Thanks
Not a dumb question at all! 250mm x 250mm is the size of the cutout inside the white card mount. I had to use a craft knife to cut this card a few mm from all inside edges to make the hole 267mm wide. The LED strips I used are standard, and like yours have a spacing of 16.6mm. Let me know if this explanation makes sense!
Scott Marley I clearly bought the wrong frame. The inside of my frame is 250mm x 250mm but the mount is only 200x200. Oh well. I wonder if yours is the 300x300 version
@@andymonks7126 ah crap, you're right, it was the 30x30. Sorry for making you buy the wrong frame! I'll edit the description now, and thanks for letting me know!
Scott Marley no problems. Just means I have a 13x13 practice one. You might want to update the link to the correct size. Just waiting for my copper tape to arrive now to wire the power and ground up. Anyway great couple of videos. Thanks
Thank you very much for your video. Where did you have the cardboard strips lasered and what did it cost? I wouldn't know what kind of company could do that.
I lasered the wood at a local hackspace, only had to pay for the plywood which was about £3. It would cost a lot more if you had a company do it for you.
Awesome
Hello, did you use a logic level converter for the data pin of the esp32?
No, it ran fine without one. In fact I've never had to use one in all of my ESP projects. Some people do though, no idea why it works for some and not others!
According to a note on the PJRC serial ws2812 driver github, only WS2812 made in 2014 did not work with 3V.
Hi bro. Thanks a lot for the tutorial. I leave you some questions.
it works with artnet protocol too? Can you please tell me specs of power supply? (Volt/amp)
In order to power up the lolin v3 that i have, can i use the same power supply of the ledstripe using Vin pins?
Thanks
5v 15a
Can you share the laser cut files pleaseeeee!
When using the Arduino Nano or Uno via usb I always have, #define MAX_AMPS 500 //value in milliamps and #define VOLTS 5. FastLED.setMaxPowerInVoltsAndMilliamps(VOLTS, MAX_AMPS); in the set-up. Safety.
Nice video! Thanks!
I'm trying to control small ws2812b matrix (8x8) using ESP32 but pixels doesn't show correctly... Also tried with level shifters but same results...
Do you have any advice?
I'm afraid I have no idea what it could be without knowing a lot more about the problem. Although in theory the lights need a 5V signal, I've never had a problem using the 3V3 output from the ESP32 to drive them without level shifters.
I think it's a timing problem. Have you tried to use a different GPIO pin.
I know it is a bit late, but have you connected the ground from the led strip to the esp32?
This looks amazing, which glass do you use?
It's just the glass that comes with the frame. Underneath the glass is some A3 paper to act as a diffuser
nice job !!
Hey Scott! I'm planning to make something like this based on your video and my question is there any power issues? And how do you power the leds?
I haven't had any issues, I powered it from a standard USB battery pack. It runs for about 8-10 hours on my 20,000mah pack depending on their brightness you use.
@@ScottMarley do you know how many amps they use thanks?
@@wowiee I use FastLED to limit the power draw to 2A, still seems plenty bright enough at that current and gives decent battery life.
@@ScottMarley thanks for answering my questions earned my sub
@@ScottMarley Hi again scott, my esp32 just arrived and I'm wondering if you are just using a usb to power esp32 and the power comes from the esp32 for the leds
I am not well versed on this, but a question -ESP32 doesn't need any sort of resistors/capacitors while connecting to led ?
You can use them if you like, and they are recommended, but I've never had an issue not using them.
@@ScottMarley And when it comes to ESP can we provide power to Led via the microcontroller like we can in Arduino Nano/Uno ? I mean esp is 3.3v and nano/uno are 5v so just a thought
@@sagarmgandhi if you only have a few LEDs, you can power them from the 5V pin on the ESP. Any more than that and you will want a proper power supply. The data pin to the LEDs from the ESP is at 3.3V rather than 5V. If you want to do it 100% correctly you should use a level shifter to change the 3.3V signal to 5V, but I've found the data works fine at 3.3V.
@@ScottMarley Thank You for taking time to explain. I am still watching videos on ESP and Nano tp understand things before i dive into making it. There is so much that can be done and its so cool, but i am more interested in the spectrum analyzer you made using ESP and FFT library
Scott Marley could this be made sound reactive ? cheers marko
Yes, see my other videos!
@@ScottMarley thank you sir
Can you share the square design of the Carton?
Not sure what you need? The outer frame was just a picture frame I bought from Hobbycraft in the UK.
@@ScottMarley can ya share the files for the laser cutter, so that i can get a service to the cardboard matrix for me.
NVM i found those on github, thanks
Do the LEDS work OK, powered by 5V with a 3.3V data signal?
Yes, they seem to be happy with a 3.3v data signal. I've never needed to use level shifters or anything.
How much power supply did you use? 100W @ 5Vdc ?
I limit the current to 2A and use a usb power bank , the type of thing you can charge your phone with. 100W is massive overkill, I'm pulling 10w max.
do you need wifi connection for esp32 after running the game?
No, runs via Bluetooth
5:18 Do I recognize a cord chewed by a kitty? :D
Haha, very well spotted! Wasn't even my cat!
Hi what size Copper strip you using in this project please ?
Not entirely sure, but probably 4mm or so
The project is awesome :) Now I'm planing to similar on my own.
How do you power supply your matrix? 16x16 LEDs need pretty much Amps to work on a full brightness. Do you have a 15 A external power supply or just making sure that your matrix brightness is lowered to some level?
Hi, please show it off when you have completed it! Have a look at my next video here: ua-cam.com/video/cqmWfE1DSyM/v-deo.html and the one afterwards here: ua-cam.com/video/apmOSQmeKJA/v-deo.html for more information, but in my latest code I use the FastLED command FastLED.setMaxPowerInVoltsAndMilliamps(5,1000); Change the '1000' to however many mA you would like to limit it to. While I'm writing code for it, I set it to 1000, then it runs happily from the USB port on my laptop. When I want to show it off somewhere, I connect it to a standard USB power bank and change it to 2000mA which is more than bright enough unless you're in daylight. I've had it run for over 10 hours on a 20,000mAh pack as it's not drawing 2A most of the time anyway. PS, there's no need to run WB2812B LEDs at full brightness anyway usually. 200 looks almost as bright as 255 and drawns way less current.
@@ScottMarley well, somehow I've missed these videos ;) thank you for links
what is the brightness that you set for this video?
@@witastwosz360 in this video the whole thing is running from the usb port on my laptop, so definitely less than 200. It was a while back so I can't tell you exactly. Most likely to be around 100 ish.
@@ScottMarley OK thanks, all I need is to wait for my led strips to arrive from aliexpress (4 weeks to go lol)
Дешево и красиво! Классно!!!
what material do you use for the 2nd grid?
3mm laser cut plywood
@@ScottMarley thx sir. i wanna build a 16x20 matrix. i m not sure, if the memory of arduino uno is enough. can you tell, how much memory your tetris with all external libraries take, splitted in program code and variables? i asume the 2k sram of the uno could be hardly enough, but i dont know, what extra memory the libraries take.
How can I make circular effects? Mandala drawing?
That's not trivial (and impossible to answer in a UA-cam comment), but it's all just mathematics at the end of the day! Look up how to draw circles using trigonometry or use a different library that does that for you. github.com/AaronLiddiment/LEDMatrix would be one option. Or go with Adafruit's gfx library instead of FastLED.
@@ScottMarley Yes, I understand all this perfectly, and so I thought, why not draw a rainbow coming out of the center of the circle?
@@АндрейМухин-м2я sure, go for it!
@@ScottMarley Look at this video ua-cam.com/video/R6fDstoRnXA/v-deo.html
@@АндрейМухин-м2я that looks very cool, it's using Jinx software running on a laptop though. It would be a fair bit of work to port that over to run on a microcontroller such as the ESP32.
Could you tell how high your wodden grid is? (which results in the space between the Leds and the paper)
16mm. I've just put the illustrator file I used for laser cutting on GitHub if that helps. You would need 34 of them in total to make the grid.
@@ScottMarley Great work. Do you have a link to the illustrator file?
@@jefffrilot9667 hi, it's on GitHub linked in the description of this followup video ua-cam.com/video/cqmWfE1DSyM/v-deo.html
Also have a look at the follow up to the follow-up! ua-cam.com/video/apmOSQmeKJA/v-deo.html