Led lightshow, a few questions

[phil4321]

Hi there all,

You guys seem to really know your stuff when it comes to electronics and making them work properly.

Basically this is what I'm after,  I am a computer modder and I am going to be starting a new project shortly, I have been pooling ideas for over six months now and imo this rig I have in my head is going to be the "be all end all" of modded computer cases. This thing is going to be nuts, but on to why I am here. 

I want to create an led light setup for my computer, but I don't just want it to light my system thats the easy part, I want to be able to program it for different songs. Not just the beat though, I want to have individual colors for each band member and have  leds go off for most of the notes they play.  Right now I'm using "light-o-rama sequence editor" to create a light show for the song "Tom Sawyer" by Rush, its going well but slowly, im a little more than 3/4 through Neal Peart' drum beats and I still have to do Geddy Lee' synthesizer and Alex Lifeson' guitar.

Basically i want to use the Light-o-rama software to get the timings down, it tells you at what point the leds fires and then how long it lasts ie from 1:23:54 to 1:23:64. I'm sure some of you are familiar with the program.

then i want to take the timings and move them into a programing language, create a few basic lighting schemes for the computer and the lightshow itself and then export them to an led controller.

hardware wise i would like to have 30-50 rbg leds and 10-20 uv leds wired to an led controller.

i need the led controller to use a usb interface, i have seen the led-wiz but i have a few concerns about it, mainly the lack of a "program" button. i need a button to cycle through my various programs ie: 1 button press for program one, 2 button presses for program two, ect and hold button for off.

my other concern about the led wiz is the software, I could be wrong but I don't think you can use a basic programming language instead of their software, and i feel like programming it myself would give me more control over the unit, timings, colors, effects, brightness ect

some of my questions are:

how do i get the created program to the led controller, it would be a hex file right, im assuming its not as easy as drag and drop.

do you know of any other usb controllers that are more along the lines of what im looking for or is there a way to add a "program" button to the led-wiz?  Any DIY led controller kits out there that meet my requirments?

thanks for any input

any:

referals to other material
questions
comments
concerns
ideas
solutions

are more than welcome

-Phil
keymaster_2001@hotmail.com

[headkaze]

There are a few ways to go about this. You can use the LEDWiz or the PACDrive, both have SDK's.

There are links to the SDK's on the BYOAC Wiki's Utilities page.

It has source code examples in most popular languages. What you will need to do is somehow export the Light-o-rama song patterns into a format you can read into your program. That might not be as easy as you think but it depends alot on how the software works.

You can always consider writing a program to convert the Light-o-rama song patterns to LWAX format which is a format developed by a few members here. There are a few plugins that support playing the LWAX format, and arzoo might even have a stand-alone LWAX player based on LEDBlinky Animation Editor.

Anyway many of these options depend alot on your programming skill and experience. But if you don't want to use LWAX format then you can just program the LED's directly. This is done using binary where each bit represents the LED's state. For the LEDWiz there is also a PMW setting (we call intesity) that you can set as well. The SDK provides the functions. I would recommend taking the C# or VB.NET examples and working from them. Visual Studio 2008 Express is free and is a nice IDE to develop the application.

[phil4321]

Thanks for the reply,

i had always planed on programming the leds directly, i feel this will give me a littie more control over the lightshow as im sure there will probably be some timing issues once i get it up and running. im just going to use the times given in light-o-rama and then tweak it as i go.

will programing directly still give me all the features of the led-wiz, ie fade in and out, different colors with rbg leds ect?

once the program is complete how do i get it onto the led wiz? or do i have to have it connected via usb at all times, i would prefer to run direct power lines from my PSU so i dont have a usb cord running to it 24/7.  again this is where the lack of a program button comes into play. id really like to be able to cycle 2 or 3 pre-set programs "firmwared" onto the led wiz. is there any way to add a button or accomplish this in some other fashion?

"I would recommend taking the C# or VB.NET examples and working from them"
these are examples that come with the led wiz sdk? where do i get it, shipped with the led wiz?

-thanks for you help man

-Phil

[headkaze]

will programing directly still give me all the features of the led-wiz, ie fade in and out, different colors with rbg leds ect?

Yes all the built in effects are available

once the program is complete how do i get it onto the led wiz? or do i have to have it connected via usb at all times, i would prefer to run direct power lines from my PSU so i dont have a usb cord running to it 24/7.  again this is where the lack of a program button comes into play. id really like to be able to cycle 2 or 3 pre-set programs "firmwared" onto the led wiz. is there any way to add a button or accomplish this in some other fashion?

You should be able to connect the LEDWiz via usb although you may need to power it with 12V from your PC's power supply. Check the intructions for more info.

"I would recommend taking the C# or VB.NET examples and working from them"
these are examples that come with the led wiz sdk? where do i get it, shipped with the led wiz?

No the SDK is not official or available from GGG. I linked to the page where you can find it in my first post.