FastLED Basics Episode 4 - Waves and blur

The fourth episode of FastLED basics has us looking at the wave and blur functions. Learning how to use beatsin8 / 16 will eable you to make dynamic patterns that move smoothly, and blur will help along the way!

Amazon UK

Amazon US

00:00 - Intro
00:46 - Beatsin8
03:14 - Phase offset / timebase
06:24 - Adding waves
09:42 - Sawtooth
10:36 - Blur

[ramkumarpk]

This is absolutely the BEST FastLED playlist ever. I was just casually looking at what I can do with a strip of NeoPixels I have and I am mindblown by what I have seen in your videos so far. What I thought would be a mediocre project ended up being a very professional looking one. Hats off to you.

[turnerkirk]

PRAISE THE LED GODS!!! This has to be the greatest FastLED tutorial series ever created. 1) The way you explained converting to floating point values was so easy to understand! I've tried reading through the FastLED code many times and always just give up trying to understand what a Q8.8 is (and a fract8 and a qadd8 and all the other things they've created). 2) your explanation of time offset and phase and how they work together is absolutely brilliant. I've tried and failed so many times to find a way to understand these functions only to find open questions on forums or stack overflow where the answers were not correct. THIS is very correct! thank you!

[ThePaddingtonsChannel]

Great video series to show how to actually use the given library functions and see the actual results. Thanks a lot!

[ariherzig]

Thank you so much for making these videos! I've been using some of the functionality of FastLED for a while, but have been stuck on just how to use a lot of the functions. You're teaching style is so great at getting the information across without any extraneous fluff.

[stevenhyde]

followed these series of vids, brilliant, all worked, many thanks Scott

[iuhere]

very well compiled series, much thoughtful, and generous . In short easy for beginners. Thank you for creating this series. Good luck. Good day.

[krikks]

Thank you for these great videos. Im a total noob, but with your help, learning is a breeze. Again, thank you! :)

[SergeiJonovich]

Another great episode - slowly becoming more enlightened... Trying not to blur or fade too much before the next ;)

[paulvorderegger]

I just want to say this is THE best programming tutorial series I have seen. I have very little knowledge of C++ and I have never used FastLED (though I develop Android apps with Java) and everything is so easy to understand and everything makes sense. I understand every line of code in all the videos because your explanations are really good.
I never thought that I'd find a tutorial useful for anything other than a problem in my code but this just makes me want to open my IDE.

[scottstevens]

These are Great Tutorials!
I feel like I'm almost understanding some of those 'esoteric' functions I've had no idea what to do with before.

[thedenus]

Thank you so much for that. As a newbie, I was looking for this for so long for a specific project. I watched all 4 videos and learn a lot.
You have a amazing way to explain things. Thanks again!

[jjproductions]

Well done! I really like how you include examples of the code and the outcome on the LEDs! Great stuff, I have learned A LOT from your videos! Thank you!

[MxFx]

Your videos are amazing! I'm an absolute newb and you teach in a way that is easily understandable. Thank you for taking your time to make these videos.
Learning how to code inputs like a button to switch modes have been troublesome for me to grasp. Might be a cool Idea for a future video :)

[MoGabbRomania]

after this tutorial i learned so many things now i understand more function (mechanism) of fastled, greatest tutorial :D

[navneet]

I just love your FastLED tutorials. Could you please make one where we can take the audio input (from some media file/audio sensor) and convert them into light output in terms of waves? That'd be so cool!

[dvohwinkel]

Scott, another great video. Good use of visuals to explain the concept of the beatsin. It made it much easier to understand. I had never even heard of the blur function so that was cool. When you have multiple waves the addition is not really adding the two colors to each other is it? It's more of the int values are being added and then the color is pulled from the hue wheel.. I'm not sure if my question is even making sense :)

[Richie_]

Great video. I will have to play with the code for a while.

[failurite]

Scott, curious if you have played with ChatGPT with regards to these types of equations. I feel like it should be good at this visual effect -> math -> change in input arguments type of code generation. I think a video specifically on how you communicated an effect to ChatGPT and how the resulting code mapped to a given math equation/wave would be super informative, especially for people that are less into coding and more into getting to a given effect output.

Really amazing video, I learned more about how to do moving LED's in an efficient way in 10 minutes than all the googling i've done on the topic.

[paulbaird]

Scott I keep coming back to this video set. It's solidified my project for certain! A question though - With Blur1d, as the driving pixel nears the end of the strip and reaches the last LED, the blur trailing it also disappears before reaching the end. It makes sense to me why it's doing that as the blur depends on the driving pixel, but is there a quick work around to ensure the blur continues on course, or should I arbitrarily change the LED_NUMS to be higher than my actual strip to act as a quick fix?

[jeanetiennette]

Thank you for the explanations. How would you go if you want the sawtooth to start with red and end up with purple continuously, that is, same colour all the time.