Rendering to a wall of ws2812b leds

[Escherx]

Hey all, I've only just got started with magic, but am totally loving it. I want to use magic to provide visuals for my music project. I think I have my head around using midi to sequence and control the scene playback, but I'm wondering if anyone has had experience rendering magic onto ws2812b leds.

I want to build a wall of leds, with a resolution of 60 by 45. I've played around and have some effects that look good at that low resolution.

The ways I can see to do this:

* USB converter
* Fadecandy
* Stream video from windows laptop as a MJPEG stream, decode with a raspberry pi and write it out using the PWM pins

Has anyone had experience doing any of those? I'd like to use the third way, since I already have some code that uses a raspberry PI to run some ws2812b leds, but maybe the usb converters are easier to use. Does anyone know how to get magic to render to fadecandy or that other usb converter?

I'll put up some video of my build once I've got it going

[Escherx]

Looks like fadecandy + spout + a custom processing script is the way to do this. Unsure about serial bandwidth to the fadecandy, but hopefully it won't be a bottleneck.

[Magic]

I don't have too much experience in this area, but I do know about one hardware solution: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1453. Basically you connect the DVI video cable from your computer, and it takes care of all the rest for you. It's a bit expensive, but there might be a cheaper way to do the same thing.

[dj0le]

I can explain my setup if it will help. But, I haven't used Magic to make the LED visuals.

Hardware:
Four 5 meter long ws2812 LED strips with 300 pixels each. Each strip is separated into 2 universes of 150 LEDs (for a total of 8 universes & 1200 LEDs).

One LEDmx4 pro controller. The controller can handle exactly 8 universes, but if you wanted more lights, you could use multiple controllers.

A standard 300 watt computer power supply.

A weather proof outdoor plastic gang box that holds the controller and psu.

A diffuser to make the LEDs look cooler. Sometimes I use straight unpainted canvas in frames (and wrap the leds behind it or just on the edges and project content onto the canvas). Sometimes I line the strips behind whatever I am projecting on to make the wall behind glow. Sometimes I just stuff them in 3/4" off white tubing that I can bend into various random shapes like cubes or whatever and toss them around the stage.

The led controller and computer are then physically connected via ethernet.


Software:
I use artnet to communicate data to the strips. And, I use Jinx! or QLC+ as the primary software to control the light visuals. Both are free & accept midi so you can use your controller of choice to engage the various patterns. They each have audio reactive ability and you can program tons of scenes and chases ahead of time to assign to your controller.

Hope that helps. I have never tried the raspberry/arduino route, but I know a lot of people do use that setup. I'm sure it would work fine. Also, you might want to consider 'Milky Balls' rather than the ws2812 strips. You can google them on ali express. I think for a random setup it would be a lot more convenient than having the strips. I plan to buy some of those next myself.