Led light strip for light array?

[Ale]

Hello CHI community,

First of all, thanks everyone for sharing such great knowledge here! : )

I am planning to build a dome, but I am not familiar with welding and Arduino, so I taught of using a LED light strip such as the one bellow:
https://neonica.eu/neonica-rgb-ic-sk-6812-led-strip-180-led.html

This strip  has 5V led and can control led lights individually on a sequence (led1/led2, etc) with a small controller sold separately.

My plan is to "glue" this strip inside a dome. Would that kind of setup work?

Appreciate any inputs! : )

Cheers

[Dave Martin]

Ale,

The idea of using addressable LEDs is definitely attractive; but I think it would harder than you think, and not very successful, to use those strips.

1) Those LEDs are not bright - you need a reasonably power light source to cast the shadows for the RTI process - or you need very long exposure times and noisy high ISO.

2) If you use such a strip, you will only be using a fraction of the LEDs

3) You can't just use, say, a sequential controller, you will need some form of programmable control - be it Arduino or PC or AVR or even TTL logic - to switch on the appropriate LED, let it settle, then fire the camera, and then repeat. Or, if your off-the-shelf controller allows you to specify switch on LED 74 at R=..G=..B=.. then you could do that manually, fire the camera, switch off LED 74 and then switch on, say, LED 81.

4) If you use such a strip, you will struggle to get the LEDs in the optimum position unless you cut the tape and solder fragments together (not actually difficult at all) and that is an attractive possibility (subject to note 1 above though)

I have actually tried using strips similar to this as donors for a mini-dome, chopping into individual LEDS, placed appropriately around a dome and chaining them with soldered jumpers (light for data in/out, slightly heavier for power and ground, with extra power tapped-in periodically). However, results were not great due to low light output from individual LEDs.

Dave

[Tomasz]

Hello Ale,

just came across your question. I'm building RTI domes using this approach (addressable LEDs and Arduino controller) and it works :-) Write to me if you're still interested in this project.

A video presenting the dome: https://wimic.agh.edu.pl/chmura/index.php/s/dJS5gWZjwTZb4Wf

Best,

Tomasz