LED Start with an offset

[Ashram56]

Good morning,

I'm trying to write a code that would have two "comets" chasing each other on a led ring. To that end I have created two segments, but I have not seen yet how to have the second segment start it's animation with an offset (ie half of the ring).

Is this possible ?

Regards

[Keith Lord]

If I'm understanding what you're trying to do, you shouldn't need to start the second comet with an offset. Assigning each half of the ring to a segment should be enough. Something like this:

ws2812fx.setSegment(0, 0,           LED_COUNT/2-1, FX_MODE_COMET, RED, 5000, NO_OPTIONS);
ws2812fx.setSegment(1, LED_COUNT/2, LED_COUNT-1,   FX_MODE_COMET, RED, 5000, NO_OPTIONS);

[Ashram56]

Thanks, that indeed did the trick.

Now I have another issue linked to segment management.

I have the following segments defined

"
ws2812fx.setSegment(0,0,LED_COUNT-1,DEFAULT_MODE,WHITE,DEFAULT_SPEED,true);
ws2812fx.setSegment(1,0,LED_COUNT-1,DEFAULT_MODE,WHITE,DEFAULT_SPEED,false);

ws2812fx.setIdleSegment(2,0,LED_COUNT/2-1,DEFAULT_MODE,RED,DEFAULT_SPEED,true);
ws2812fx.setIdleSegment(3,LED_COUNT/2,LED_COUNT-1,DEFAULT_MODE,RED,DEFAULT_SPEED,true);

ws2812fx.setIdleSegment(4,0,LED_COUNT/2-1,DEFAULT_MODE,BLUE,DEFAULT_SPEED,false);
ws2812fx.setIdleSegment(5,LED_COUNT/2,LED_COUNT-1,DEFAULT_MODE,BLUE,DEFAULT_SPEED,false);
"

Only one pair can be active at any time.
First pair is fully working, no issue

Second pair and third pair however are causing problem:
In this code, the second and third pair should not be rotating in the same direction, correct ?

However when I activate them using a code like this:

if (ws2812fx.isActiveSegment(2))
{
ws2812fx.swapActiveSegment(2,4);
ws2812fx.swapActiveSegment(3,5);
}

It works fine with regards to one comet chasing the other, with the correct color, however the orientation statement does not have any effect (it's always the same direction).

Did I miss something with regards to segment definition ?

[EDIT] So that's odd, turns out that if I use "REVERSE" instead of "true" in my segment definition, everything works fine. I would have understood if "true" had not worked at all, but it did work for the two first (active) segment definition, but not for the remaining four (inactive) segment definitions.

So problem solved in my case, although there might be a bug in the library.

Really great library, ton of work, ton of capabilities

[Keith Lord]

Hmmm...interesting. There is no setIdleSegment() function call that accepts a boolean value as the last parameter. These are the two allowed function signatures:

setIdleSegment(uint8_t n, uint16_t start, uint16_t stop, uint8_t mode, uint32_t color,          uint16_t speed, uint8_t options)
setIdleSegment(uint8_t n, uint16_t start, uint16_t stop, uint8_t mode, const uint32_t colors[], uint16_t speed, uint8_t options)

It's odd that the compiler doesn't throw an error when you use true or false as the last parameter. Weird.

[Ashram56]

I'm using Sloeber Arduino, so that might explains.
Note that I had not realized reading the documentation, that true/false only applied to the SetSegment function and not SetIdleSegment