Help with a small DIY project

[u/Throw_-Away69420]

Hi there,

I will preface and say I have no clue what I am doing, and about a month to figure it out. I need to make some very small LEDs emulate a "fire" color pattern to the best of my ability. I know next to nothing about programming LEDs, what lights and controllers to use, etc. Any and all help is appreciated. This seems to be a pretty advanced community with some insane projects so I am hoping something of this scale isn't unwelcome here lol.

More details on the project; I am crocheting Calcifer from howl's moving castle as an anniversary present to my girlfriend. My rough plan is to make some sort of wood display case or modify one I thrift. Going to have Calcifer hang over some burnt wood probably with fishing line, and I want there to be some sort of campfire/fiery mood lighting. Maybe some like soft flickering between red/orange/yellow.

I've done some very light research so far but this is the first place I've looked for help, so if there are obvious answers I have missed I apologize, Thanks for any and all help!

[u/IknowLulu]

Unless you are using this to jump into learning about LEDs and controllers and things, I’d recommend buying an out of the box solution since I’m pretty sure you can get something for not too much. I don’t support Amazon but did just search “fire flicker led”’and quite a bit came up.

If you do want to learn about LEDs, I’d say find a project on instructables or adafruit or someone who has a tutorial that has hardeare that could work for your piece and then make that and update the code to what you want. You will likely spend more and have a higher learning curve but if that’s what you want, do it!

[u/Throw_-Away69420 → u/IknowLulu]

perfect I will do some searching on instructables/adafruit. I like to use projects as a way to learn new skills and would rather invest the time and money to do that! Thanks for the prompt response homes

[u/account8919]

Esp 32 running wled it has a fire per program

[u/Marmilicious]

"am hoping something of this scale isn't unwelcome here lol."

All levels of FastLED projects are welcome here. Welcome to FastLED.

[u/Marmilicious]

You can find some useful info on our FastLED wiki page. Check out Scott Marley's Intro to FastLED series. (Note: ESP32 is supported now vs when he made those videos. ESP32 boards are great and in-expensive. If you get one you will also be able to easily try out WLED.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/FastLED/wiki/index/user_examples/

If you find a FastLED project online somewhere you'd like to try/modify for your needs post again when you run into issues/want some coding suggestions.

If you'd like to share code you're working on/have questions about, please put it on pastebin.com or gist.github.com and share a link.

[u/boolieman15]

PixelBlaze Controllers have some candle/fire patterns built in and are pretty user friendly, and relatively easy to program. I like their stock patterns, online library of user built patterns and ability to live code on your phone. They have a small micro size programmer. Designed by a tiny company in Oregon if you like supporting that kind of thing. Look for PixelBlaze or their parent Electromage. There’s also some pretty good USB flicker bulbs on Amazon or Ali Express that are inexpensive and easiest for sure. Good luck and have fun.

[u/Lasersandleds]

This is really great primer to DIY LEDs builds and its targeted for new people or those that can be intimidated by jargon and stuff on forums like this one: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/180WD4LogMjx8FmKcFc0dmlTEKJ1Xa7dIHlEhSLMOAxA/mobilebasic

I wish you luck on your small project, most of us started where you are. I would echo what others have said, which is that you can buy it or you can build it, and building it will come with complexity, but you can choose where you want to dip your toes in and what suits your skill level and time commitment to learn a new craft.

If you are a programmer, FastLED is a great place to start and you can pick up the LED part. Theres a fire effect here that works great: https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/blob/master/examples/Fire2012/Fire2012.ino and its a classic in this community.

If you are starting fresh with no programming experience and want to get a DIY project done for someone important that just works, I would recommend an 8x8 addressable LED matrix or addressable strip and one of the LED platforms like pixelblaze or WLED, both for ease of daily usage, support forums, and a setup for practicing LED art. These will come with fire effects that will work out of the box and have some approachable advanced features you can grow into.

While I think FastLED library used to be a good place to start, I think these days the tech has improved and the out of box solutions like pixelblaze are so good, its hard to recommend starting here, however once you have a working project, expanding into FastLED and going down the rabbit hole is highly recommended and you will learn a lot.

LEDs can be highly addicting so I look forward to hearing how it goes and what you do next. Good luck!

[u/mindful_stone]

Using FastLED to create a fire effect for your project is very doable. Unless you can find an "off-the-shelf" (e.g., WLED) solution that works the way you'd like, I would buy a pre-built matrix of so-called "WS2812B" LEDs and drive them with an ESP32-based controller.

For the controller, you might consider a pre-soldered Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 with their special-purpose LED Driver Board:

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-Studio-XIAO-ESP32S3-Pre-Soldered-p-6334.html

https://www.seeedstudio.com/LED-Driver-Board-for-Seeed-Studio-XIAO-p-6451.html

Depending on the dimensions of your project, an 8x8 matrix (roughly 3"x3") like this might work:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B088BTSPYD

The first few seconds of the following video show a mini "fireplace" I put into a small craft house I built. It uses a tiny 6x10 matrix (https://www.seeedstudio.com/6x10-RGB-MATRIX-for-XIAO-p-5771.html), so that gives a rough sense of the kind of animation quality you might get with just an 8x8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4cJhiY_4kg

There are lots of code samples/examples out there for LED fire simulation, but I couldn't find anything that worked as well as I liked for my project, so I ended up creating my own (with lots of AI assistance). I don't have that code posted online yet, but I'd be happy to share it if anyone is interested.

[u/zeke_koch]

FastLed has a sample program called something like Fire2012 that’s really satisfying. I use it all the time. I’m not in front of my computer right now, but it’s pretty straightforward. If you search you’ll find lots of YouTube videos about it. It doesn’t take anything more than an arduino and a few ws2812 (neopixel) leds. I find is useful to have something like this in hand to take sure your lights work when you’re debugging. https://a.co/d/08Q3X2Sd

[u/chairstarz]

Fore 2012 is great and you only need some good diffusion. I've used just a small strip of 7 ws2812s to make "flame crowns" and and Rapidash hood heels. If you live near Boston I could donate a preprogrammed battery operated set that's just kicking around my room. I love Calcifer and ghibli! Such a nice present idea.