04-FastLED with Arduino Tutorial Introduction - How to Code for RGB LED Strips (WS2812B) 

I've updated the description with the source code, which is now available at pastebin.com/xXJ0wTku

Came for the Microsoft history, stayed for the awesome projects powered by MSFT option FU money. Dude. You're living the dream. Thanks for sharing.

I was a friend of Dan Garcia, this whole video would have made him incredibly happy, thank you!

Dave, I would mention that Mark Kriegsman (kriegsman) joined the FastLED project in 2013 and that the library is still actively maintained by Mark and a great group of people. I am really liking this series of videos, great job.

I was just reading your book earlier today and coincidentally googled how to wire a WS2812B LED strip and found your video! Very cool.

Hey - just as a note - if you are like me, and you bought the Heltec (HiLetgo) ESP32 LoRa instead... :) You will need to set the OLED_RESET (Pin16) to High and add the following code to the void setup() to get results on your OLED display... pinMode(16,OUTPUT); digitalWrite(16, LOW); // set GPIO16 low to reset OLED delay(50); digitalWrite(16, HIGH); // while OLED is running, must set GPIO16 to high

Use FastLed inbuilt power limiting. Works and is nice: you tell it your power or current limit, it globally dims the strip to meet it (if you light too many)

I'm following along at home.... Christmas presents will be very bright this year. ;-)

The audio in your video is great. I see no problem keeping the mic right there, it's quite unobtrusive. And the bokeh is great too. :P Really good video and great info Dave. I think Dan would agree.

Love you channel! Commenting to let the YT overlords know that there is interaction and should be promoted to others!

Might I suggest managing your videos in playlists so that one can view this whole series easily? Thanks for the videos!

Man you are badass! Took me a week to find out i can "puzzle" the GBR / RGB stuff. Also the rainbow method is an awesome trick. Your channel is way underrated, keep up the good work!

Hi there the mic is fine in the corner and you don't need headphones I've seen a few of your other videos and I have subscribed keep up the good work

You do a great job. Looking to implement this into a Burningman LED bike set up and a staff that also works.

"Call the fire department that guy's house is on fire!' "No need, he told me he has fire leds." 'Cool, I guess he must have installed smoke and heat generators too!"

Crap. A friend of a friend went down on that dive boat with Dan. Second time I've heard a reference to that tragedy in the past 7 days. Hey anyway, I'm really enjoying your channel.

It was so simple I had to watch it a couple of times, and I was convinced I was missing something. Great video!

Task Manager Sensei

Hi Dave Newbi here . Very helpful and love your banter. Well worth a subscription.

Hi Dave. I am at the start of my learning to program LEDs, and this is a nice introduction. Thank you.

That fire effect does look pretty real. Someone is liable to call the fire department for you.

Leave the mic in frame. Quality is fine and no one should care that it can be seen.

I had a Neopixel strip laying around from an old AdaBox and was able to get my project up and running quickly with this guide. Thanks Dave!

It's cool to see Louis C.K. is getting into hobby electronics these days

First View and First like of the new Video! Keep up the great work. I love the format and cant wait to get my hands on the animation sequences code!

To borrow a phrase from a popular pilot You-tuber (Mentour Pilot), "Absolutely Fantastic!" (Mentour is the European spelling.)

LOL, Man those fire windows looks pretty dangerous. I mean, someone might just call Firefighters to your house. 😂

Love this series @Dave’s Garage!

Loving your movies Dave. Please don’t take this badly, but outside the USA “pound” has a different meaning. Pound is “£”. So it’s “hash define”, not pound define.

Mic I frame is not an issue. Alternatively you could use a Lavalier mic, lots of people do that.

Oh, and since you've asked for tips regarding recording: someting to consider: the echo while recording a video. I am responding 5 months later so you might already are awere (if you weren't already)

Excellent!!!! I found using GPIO 23 for LED DATA on my DOIT ESP32 DEVKIT V1 gave low output during reset and avoids full brightness on power-up. I was trying GPIO3 but it comes up as a driver and is high for about 250ms until the pin gets setup, long enough to confuse all the WS2812Bs and set the controls for the heart of the sun.

The Most LED Strip person in youtube. OMG, its too expensive watching the number of strip you have. Btw, nice video, i like it

Thanks for teaching us Dave. You are awesome. 😆

You’re like an alternate universe version of AvR where he studied software engineering.

Dave, I have just a question of looks, did you use the strip with 144 leds per metre or 60?

Loved the way you ended it. 😂😂😂😂😂

"More than 1000 LED's? You have a LED problem". Sir, you have a LED problem haha. Nice work :)

Don't leave us hanging here, Dave! Anxiously awaiting episode 5...

Just found this channel as I learn Arduino and fastled. But there is so so much more.. thanks for producing all this content!

Woo , now i'm tempted to get an arduino uno kit and a WS2812B strip !

You mentioned connecting to a USB HUB/Switch (I think you meant hub) to protect the computer. Does it need to be powered? Recommended link? BTW. Loving the videos!

You're the man" #1 fun stuff to do"

Great video, sort of like This Old Tony but for LEDs. Subbed.

Just working thru this series - aiming to take my kids through them afterwards (they like playing with LEDs too). Happen to have some slightly different kit lying around - so using a Lolin D32 for ESP32 and a nokia 5110 screen instead of an OLED - using the same libraries - just a little fiddling on the constructors - and it all works well. But - I was going mad - once I added the fastled code - the LEDs blinked like crazy. In fact - they seemed to blink along with the onboard LED. Took me a while to figure it - and you may have guessed it already :) - but this code is the reason (from the d32 header files): static const uint8_t LED_BUILTIN = 5; Oh - look - the same pin I have the pixels data line :) Oh well - made me smile.

Can't wait for Christmas now, its gonna be Lit! 🤘

Just found this channel, awesome

Love this video. It helped me get started with individually addressable LEDs more than any other I've found here. Liked, subscribed, etc. And I'll buy your book for friends who are parents of a very gifted, autistic child. Thank you. BTW, your shortened Amazon links don't work for me. Not sure if they've expired but they merely take me to the top of the shopping site, not to the individual products you've referenced. Thanks again.

Your garage looks like heaven!... :-O

Dave, is there a fastLED setting that regulates the communication speed to the WS2812B strip? I wanted to test my strip with just Red for each RGB led, then just green, then just blue to verify the individual LED were good. My string is 300 LEDs long. I have a separate 5V 20A supply for the strip. I connected the Gnd from the ESP dev board to the negative of the power supply so that the 5V power and the signal to the Data In on the strip (I’m using IO16 from the dev board) have the same common reference point. In the setup, I use a for loop to set all 300 elements of the CRGB array to 0xFF0000 so all 300 LEDs will powering only the Red LED. In the loop section, no changes are made to the CRGB array. I did leave fastLED.show() in the loop. I do not have an oled screen, but put a delay(250) in the loop. The string lights up red, but then glitch flickers to sometime showing blue briefly, and sometimes flickering to green briefly, but mostly stays on red. The CRGB data going out should never change. I’m thinking the speed of the ESP32 might be causing the data rate to be too high and the receiving WS2812B chips are not clocking in the data consistently.

Hey Dave, your videos are great and I'm following along. Keep it up. With each video though, it seems like you're suggesting I buy a slightly different arduino board. Is this really necessary? I'd love it if, up-front, you had a full parts list you would suggest for the series so I'd know how much $$$ I was committing to in order to get to the end.

Funny, but after spending my days in C#, I find going back to C++ makes my beard grayer. Thanks for some great content choices!

ur neighbors must love u

Dave, I would like to know more about the M5Stack.

I bought the board and LEDS you recommended and I have a question. The code builds fine but I get this error when uploading.. "serial.serialutil.SerialException: could not open port '/dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART'" I don't think it knows where the board is? or what port. any help or advice would be great. Thanks

The first 3 links (Lights, Mirror, ESP32) are not working, just comes up to the Amazon front page.

Love this tutorial and your humor. Thanks man! :)

It is a good job that there are people like you making these videoas. Excellent i have followed your code using 20 LEDs and the LEDs fade in and out, i have now tried 60 LEDs and the LEDs switch on and off without any fading. What am I doing wrong? Thank you

Hi Dave, your videos are very well made and a pleasure to watch. It's fun to watch pros program with FastLED! I'm not yet finished watching, but I'd like to say that displaying an oled display can hugely lower the frame rate (that's my personal experience). I've even come to conclude that oled displays are better not used at all with FastLED. Perhaps you could work around that issue by assigning that task (displaying the oled) to a different core, if at least you need a high frame rate (ESP32 should have 2 cores). I didn't try that out myself as I rather run a webserver, which is assumed to also capture a core. Note that I am an amateur by all means. Have a nice day and keep making nice videos!

Hi Dave, since you share a love of c# why haven't you tried nanoframework with esp32 ?!

Should any mains input / 5V output work for these projects? Thanks! Great videos!

Oooo fireworks mode.

I now see why your house is covered in LEDs. I’ve just had the idea to put a strip around my bedroom window behind the curtains to simulate the sun coming up when it’s winter, dark and I have to get up. And then I thought of several other places they’d look nice too... Do you just stick your LEDs to the wall with their sticky backing, or put them in aluminium channels?

Good content. Your accent provides extra watching pleasure. Thanks!

Hey man i was wondering if you can share the code of the red fire/lava style behind your back

What is that hexagonal lamp flashing patterns in the background? Have a video on it? Can be seen at 10:50

10:40 i love you dave

Dave, is the next one almost out? excitedly waiting

The Mic is fine, good stuff so far!

#Dave makes programming soooooo entertaining. Thanks #Dave

I think the amzn link to the MakerFocus ESP32 no longer works (or isn't available in Canada?)

Blue Crew!!!

I'm looking for an led strip where the LEDS are at least 3 inches apart, any recommendations?

Is there a way to connect 2 different stripes to 1 Arduino and control them parallel but with different patterns?!

Having a problem lighting all the LEDs on my strip. When I use the fill_solid() helper function and tell my strip to light all, I only get the first 5 LEDs showing. I have a 5V 40A external power supply, so power isn't the issue. I've also directly set the LEDs in the g_LEDs[] array but can only get the first 5 to show anything. I'm not using the exact same WS2812B strips that you are but it definitely is a WS2812B strip (and it's working for the first 5 LEDs). Is there any way to test a strip to determine if an LED is bad? And if one is found bad, is there any way to replace it so the strip will work? Appreciate any help,.

Nice, Like your Videos Strait to the point !

This channel is AMAZING

you really just wrapped the whole house in RGB strips lmao

I spent many years feeling like rgb led was stupid. Then I bought a few strips, power supplies, and controllers before I stuck any 5050 with and without WS2812B microcontrollers, since these are the only models any motherboard can also use. DO NOT LEAVE THE STRIPS ON THE REELS while testing, it only takes a few minutes for the reels to start melting. I heard one person say LEDs run cool. er, uh, NO! Love Your Show as a fellow neurodiverse individual forced to buy into bogus crap bad mal- and mis-diagnoses (Mal- being these ing ignorant alleged so-called psychiatrists and psychologists who forgot how important Scientific Method remains post-school. Not one has ever been anywhere near supportive or actually listened. When a client/patient says, "This Celexa is making me feel like I have Spina Bifida 24/7! What is the antidote? It is making a certain method of making it stop more of a viable option than you provide." and they respond with, "Your body just needs to get used to it, sukkah." BTW, wish dot CON is NOT the place to shop for this gear. They shipped one reel that was RGB all right, but it was Red, then Green, then Blue individual LEDs on a 12V, R, G, B four-pin arrangement, so the only way to see what color they would be as straight 5050s would is to fold the strip in a manner that puts the set of three LEDs near each other and even then you have to be about six feet away for the eye to view the color as one istead of 3cm between each. take care maestro. PS. I met Jim Alchin one night I was staying a little late to finish one important test in 28, when here he comes, in a big huge hurry, though I did see him coming, not real sure, but almost knew who was coming, hurried-up, tried to open the door as what I'd do for anyone, then WHOOSH i am invisible and nearly was knocked over. I thought it was hilarious. Also, why did full-timers keep telling us vendors our badges were Yellow, when in fact letting any sunlight on these 'Yellow' badges turned them an obvious Orange within a week. I made it 11 years testing devices etc., with three years prior at DECwest two of them, with Intel & Compaq's PURE-D SATAN-SPAWN Carly Fiona, CEO getting together under the desk conjuring-up plns to decimate the far superior DECAlpha 64-bit CPU, which occurred during my one-year tenure at DECwest as the Tester for the three-person team to support what few customers had mistakenly purchased Windows Server 2000 Enterprise or Datacenter whatever it was called, only to find I was being paid about 30 thousand dollars an hour for the actual time spent having any actual work to do t all, DEC Alphaserver and Miata workstations were tanks. My baby the first two years was Turbolaser, which I am told Alta Vista had 22 of the 8400 and a gazillion 9GB & 18GB drives to run the show. I am also told billg was tearing his hair out when Terraserver's IT was a 24/7 proposition since the Alphaserver 8400 may be a tank, Windows was nowhere near stable enough to handle the immense loads it was having to deal with, not sure whether Cluster was available yet, but even that would not help, as it was not like Stratus alleged so-called "Five Nines of Up-time" server with its dual-everything, including a mod to the motherboards to link the system clocks so they are in lock-step per instruction, the simplest incomplete description, but you know the drill. So, when one NIC failed, the whole system had to power-down (unless the guy above me had not read the manual showing how to hot-swap a PCI card while the other CPU took over, which I do not know it could do, but if iot did not, then ...) two and a half hours divided into number of hours in a year is the real-world effect on customers, eh. ;-) My favorite was the Gigabit NIC test cross-country, which for some reason PCI-X (pre-PCI Express) was not up to the job, which was really cool setting-up the probes on the HP Logic Analyzer for my manager since his patience and eyesight were needing the assist. IL:OVETHISSTUFF i just wish Customer Expectations were addressed higher-pri than they have been proven to be. Yeah, right. PS. at the tail-end of my Windows 95 2nd-tier Setup & Config Tech Support two year stint, the 2nd year as the worst team lead ever, worst. ... mostly due to Scott who is a super-genius like you and managed to be able to take calls to satisfaction while . . . BUT HE ALSO MADE A DOOM MAP of our entire building while doing so. heh anyways, the gal in FLA asked me to marry her after the eight-hour and seventeen minute call it took us to undo the possibly purposeful worst configuration of any PCI have ever seen put out by the likes of Compaq ever. Nowhere have I ever experienced so many ing intentional IRQ, I/O, and Memory resource conflicts which DOS gave no care to, somehow, but Plug & Play? erk be safe people of GAIA

where can we buy WS2812B in bulk? trying to light up a 2 level, 55' mardi gras float. I have the power suppliy capable of handling multiple branches of LED runs with proper 5v/15a vdc-vdc buck converters. I just cannot find some place that has 350-400 ft of WS2812B strips available at a decent price. I get that there was a "chip shortage" due to covid the past 3 years, but these things are not made of gold and shouldn't cost like they are.

Hey Dave. Thanks for the videos, very helpful. One question, you appear to include a number in most titles that I'm assuming is showing the order to watch the videos. However, either you skipped the number in some of the videos or I'm just not finding the whole set. How may videos are there related to FastLED with the Esp32? If you aren't showing the suggested order of these videos can you please reply and let me know the order that makes the most sense. Appreciate your help. Thanks.

Dave, possibly a stupid question but can you use FastLED to control white LEDs too and change between warm white and cool white? Or will it purely only work with RGB?

Some of your links in description are broken... Just FYI.

Could you invert the comet effect without very many changes to the code? Like, a dark spot scrolling across lit up LEDs.

Hi Sir Dave.. Thanks for all of your videos, I followed your tutorial about FastLED but it turns out my WS2812B is only showing white color LED after uploading the exact same codes. I'm using 18LEDS, 330ohms resistor for the data and Arduino nano. Why it's only shows white? Thanks.

I subscribed 30 seconds in the video. 🤣 Love your content brother!

I noticed some of the Amazon affiliate links are obsolete. Dave, would you consider refreshing them? Thank you.

Everytime I see this thumbnail the first thing I see is Tiger king.

i didnt really follow the video and decided to turn the esp32 into a sockets server and control the strip from my computer instead. this way i dont have to risk the usb 3.2 port which technically should support the 20 led's

This is a great tutorial !.....cheers.

Hi Dave .. I need your help please . I have watched so many videos you’ve published but still experiencing problems .. I’m trying to add two pir sensors to activate and deactivate my Fastled but the code isn’t working or even return strange codes . Could you help please

I'm curious as to what LED size strips you are using? Is it 96 LEDs/meter, or 144 LEDs/M? Hard to find these in longer than 1M strips online.

Hello Dave, I've been trying to code my own lightshow setup for my project, with the funtions like the knightrider scrolling lights, is there a way to use a rotary encoder to control how fast the light travels from end to end, like a speed control? I can't seem to find a way.. any help is appreciated

This is a great tutorial that I found searching for some help on lighting a fire simulation under a 3D printed NASA Mercury rocket. Was thinking of just using a fire LED light bulb until I saw this, any suggestions?The problem with the light bulb is that it is directional and I need it to shoot down.

F for the FastLED dev, I have used that library even before I seen this video.

woooh`` I LIKE YOUR CIELING LED STRIP.. WHERE CAN I FIND OR GET THE SCRIPT FOR THAT? THANKS

On the subject of power, I purchased a 5v 60A 300w power supply and a few strands of WS2812Bs. Is there a minimum amount of leds that I can power with the supply? Im burning out leds when hooked up to the power supply. I have the tester and set it to just below 5v. I figured it out. I missed the part where the esp32 needs to be grounded to the power supply.

How do you type so fast? Makes me dizzy... I have to pause to give me a break! Great video though fits what I am trying to do!

I know I'm going to screw this up, what would be a good budget (cheap) controller to try? Thanks a million for sharing. Happy holidays.

Working on externally control with 3 separate knobs / pots independently each color intensity all the way down to zero to a long strip of LEDs. Any input is appreciated while I am doing it. Maybe I see a be5er idea. By the way, the blue thumb up button worked. 😁