Tindie

Avatar

ElectroMage

3,487 orders since Aug 01, 2017

Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Ships from United States of America.

View Store

Overall Rating:

Review Breakdown

5
91 4
24 3
1 2
1 1
0

View All Reviews

Average Ratings

Product: (4.94)

Documentation: (4.74)

Shipping: (4.92)

Communication: (4.92)

All Reviews

Brandon | Oct. 20, 2019

Cant recommend enough, whether youre an LED expert or novice

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Just to clarify, these might not satisfy the most expert-y of experts. Those folks will probably be willing to spend hundreds of hours building their own custom controllers and writing all the software themselves.

For anyone who doesn't want to do that, these are fantastic. There are built in patterns that are great. I've had great success with just deleting the patterns that didn't look good on my project. Now I've got my project mapped correctly and am building my own patterns and its even more incredible.

The ability to get up and running within a few minutes is just great. Recently I was building an LED project for an art festival and working on wiring everything together. I was actually using one of these just to test the connections on LED strips since its so easy to hook up. I planned to eventually switch it out for a PixelPusher so I could do some "deeper" custom patterns, but it looked so good that I just left this in and it turned out amazing. Very well received.

There is a piece of software called PixelBlaze Firestorm that allows synchronizing multiple PixelBlazes together so we'll be adding some more to our art pieces in the future to get that awesome synchronized effect.

The developer is very friendly and has helped me with various questions I've had, the support for the product really couldn't be better.

Anyway the price is great, get one (or a few) to have laying around to throw into your projects. It's a ton of fun just playing around with them and making them do cool stuff.

One more thing, I always wire it to 'back feed' the power from my LEDs, meaning I connect the 5v PSU directly to the LEDs (typically every ~50 LEDs), then have the PixelBlaze w/ a 4 pin connector (or 3 pin if your LEDs are 3 pin) plugged into those LEDs. That way you don't need to worry about how much power you're running through the PixelBlaze, or having 2 power supplies and grounding issues, or any of that. That's the easiest way, then I use a piece of double sided tape to stick it right into the inside of my project (it's super tiny). I've also got a tiny travel router that has the PixelBlaze assigned to a static IP address so when I plug in the power, the WiFi comes on, the PixelBlaze connects, and I can control it from my phone regardless of where the project is located. PixelBlaze works perfectly for this setup.

Adam | Sept. 11, 2019

Great LED Controller

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Love the Pixelblaze controller. This last order was the 3rd one I have purchased so far. They have been perfect for my projects and I know I will be purchasing more in the future. Very easy to wire up and get the program running. Ben is super helpful when you have any questions as well. Thanks for making a great product!

Chris | Aug. 21, 2019

Best of the best

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze Sensor Expansion Board

They are selling a great product, provide excellent responsive support, and are friendly overall. I can't think of anything they could do better. On a recent order, my delivery was stolen from my mailbox before I could get it. I was sent a replacement right away at no cost. I've purchased three of their boards now over time.

Andy | Aug. 6, 2019

Fantastic

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Great communication with ElectroMage before and throughout the transaction. Prompt shipping and better than expected documentation for what is a really great product. Totally satisfied.

Jon | July 29, 2019

Simple, convenient, and great fun. This thing rocks!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I found this while shopping for parts to build my own lighting controller. The Pixelblaze looked fun, and was inexpensive to experiment with, so I ordered one. And I'm glad I did. It's a nifty little device! Saved me a ton of time, plus the built-in integer Javascript-ish interpreter makes it really fun and easy to program patterns and animations.

My Pixelblaze is controlling a 32 foot strip of WS2812s with 600 LEDs total. It's fast and smooth. I'm integrating it with the rest of my living room lighting system -- using the Pixelblaze's websocket API, I've written a device driver for the Hubitat Elevation, and a Hubitat app which allows me to sync color changes with the rest of my Hue lights, and do various other cool home automation things. (It should be an easy port to the Samsung SmartThings hub too - I'll put it up on github later this week.)

Ben! This is a clever and convenient device! Thank you for making it!

Shawn | June 25, 2019

The perfect controller!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Ben is awesome, these chips are perfect. Happy to have been connected to his work, and we will continue to put in regular orders! Thanks for making it easy.

Pierre | June 2, 2019

Easy to generate interesting effects on LED matricies

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I bought this controller to use as a quick way to test custom Neopixel based (SK6812mini and SK6805) LED matrix PCBs that I have been developing over the past year. The board is very easy to use thanks in large part to the web based interface which is well designed and very intuitive to use. Very happy with purchase and would happily recommend to anyone looking for an easy to use LED controller.

Brennan | Jan. 29, 2019

AWESOME!!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Ben is VERY helpful and the pixel blaze is everything I ever wanted in life!!1!!! Still need to try out firestorm to control a number of these over the network!

Kenneth | Jan. 21, 2019

PixelBlaze V2 - Best Bang for the Buck

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Excellent product and most fun you will have immediately out of the box. Really look forward to see this continue to develop. Especially syncing several modules to a central server.

Eric | Jan. 21, 2019

Great product, great fun.

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Very well thought out product, with great FW. Sensor board is a nice addition.
Cherry on the cake would be a wrapper (Node-red, python, bash e.g.) to help using the API or a forum to ask for help.
But the cake is already good as it is :-)

Glenn | Dec. 28, 2018

Spectacular light show as soon as I powered it up !

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Using Dot Star LED's, the Pixelblaze performed pefectly. Spectacular, colorful effects ! Hope to purchase the sensor board in the near future.

Alex | Dec. 18, 2018

Well worth the cost, even if you're hesitant.

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

It's almost unfortunate that the hardware of the Pixelblaze is so cheap and simple. Especially for "maker hardware" where you're sort of expecting to do a bunch of work, the "markup" seems rough. But 99% of the awesomeness is in the firmware, and BOY is it worth $30. The system makes it so easy to build patterns and even simple games. It took me about 8 hours to go from concept to polished game for https://www.instructables.com/id/W6-a-Drinking-Game-for-the-Indecisive/. That may seem like a lot, but about half way in, the only thing I could thing was "man, it would have sucked to have this much work, and still be responsible for the supporting framework too."

Pixelblaze offers a surprising amount of flexibility with respect to input, but it is, still, fundamentally more limited than rolling your own code with a library like fastled. Even if it's too limiting for your application, though, I'd suggest starting with a Pixelblaze prototype anyway, since it makes iterating on the details of the animation so much faster and easier.

Dave | Nov. 18, 2018

Great product and easy to setup and use

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I had cobbled together my own half baked solution for driving ~500 APA102 LEDs, but never really had the time to make it as flexible as I wanted. The Pixelblaze is amazing! Plugged it in, went through the web setup, and it immediately started driving my LEDs. The ability to write custom patterns in the web browser and see them work instantly is a game changer.

Daniel | Oct. 25, 2018

Fantastic device for light painting.

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

The documentation, features and the compact nature of this board makes it fantastic for all sorts of uses. I primarily bought it to make a light painting setup, within 10 minutes of mounting, setting up the AP and connecting the wiring it was good to go. The editor is fantastic along with the documentation and the pixel mapping feature even makes it possible to adapt it to NeoPixel ring setups. I love this thing and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to have endless fun with a wide array of lighting designs.

Dave | Sept. 8, 2018

Amazingly well put together

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

Pixelblaze is awesome! The sheer amount of effort Ben has put into this little device is really impressive. The software is rock solid and even has an API for remote control over WiFi, if that's your thing.

Jason | Sept. 5, 2018

Extremely easy, well-designed, and documented!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I am very happy with my purchase. The Pixelblaze V2 was easy to get set up and running. The documentation was thorough and complete. The included patterns are great, and the source code for all of them are included for studying, copying, and tweaking.

I will be using this to test LED strips, strings, rings, etc of various kinds. I attached two different JST-SM connectors: one four-wire for APA102, and a three-wire for WS2812, WS2811, etc.

The instant compile and run process with instant preview and output will enable me to develop, test, and tweak new patterns much faster than ever before.

I'm looking forward to an ESP32-equipped Pixelblaze V3!

Steven | Sept. 3, 2018

Best sound reactive module, great support

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

The pixelblaze (and expansion board) is the most versatile, portable, and easy to use LED controller I have come across. After several disappointing attempts to incorporate sound reactivity with an arduino / msgeq7 I stumbled across the pixelblaze and have been very impressed! I make wearable LED art for EDM shows and other microphones seem to be overwhelmed by the intensity of the sound but the microphone on the pixelblaze handles it extremely well with a little tweaking of the code. There is great documentation available online and Ben has been super helpful with any questions I've had. It's a relief to be able to ask someone who knows this hardware intimately instead of searching through forum post after forum post for a tiny hint of a solution like I find myself doing with arduino projects.

For anyone else that may happen to be doing what I am doing, the trick to making these patterns look good at a loud (>100db) music show is by replacing this line:
sensitivity = calcPIController(pic, targetFill - brightnessFeedback / pixelCount);

with a number (try different values):
sensitivity = .5

This disables software AGC, .5 seems to be the sweet spot for me but might be different depending on the acoustics & environment you're in. And fortunately you can adjust this value easily by connecting to the pixelblaze via wifi on your phone.

Todd | Aug. 21, 2018

Exceeded all expactaions

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I was looking for a good LED controller to drive some ceiling lighting in my home. I had tried a lot of options from Amazon and Alibaba. All of them were predictably horrible. I even backed a kickstarter for a good music reactive controller. I had given up and was starting to make my own Arduino/RaspberryPi controller when I found this and tested it. Pixelblaze is several orders of magnitude better than all of them. The hardware is compact, the design is great, and it’s a version 2 implementation so it’s solid. The software is crazy good. The project owner has a real passion and real talent which is evident in the quality of the overall solution.

I used it for entertainment lighting in a bar area but their are so many applications this would be great for:
Architectural lighting
Set Design lighting
Costume lighting
Automotive accent lighting
...

Jeff | June 7, 2018

Ridiculously beautiful for how easy it is

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I've started to really appreciate things that save my time on projects by *just working*.

Solder 4 points, power it, and you're running vivid example code in minutes!

I love how fast you can iterate. You click an example or code in a browser, it syncs over WiFi, and just starts running on your LEDs.

Everything about this just screams it's the work of a total craftsman. It has the best documentation I've ever seen for a maker/DIY thing. It's thoughtful.

The JavaScript-lite language is simple but rich. Everything hard is abstracted into the provided functions, so impressive, complex patterns are very easy to craft. If you have a minuscule amount of programming experience in any language then you'll just get it.

It's really a bargain too. You can order it with high quality DotStar strips that are cheaper than anywhere else other than Alibaba (and have fun picking which manufacturer to trust and waiting weeks for the shipping).

This is my favorite purchase in years! Pixelblaze is a total gem. I really don't think there's anything else even close.

Bob | May 14, 2018

This board is fantastic.

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

I've been playing with LEDs for a while now. I've written code for them in a number of environments, from assembly to arduino. This is one of the most fun and easiest to get up and running system that I've ever used. The instant compile/run process on the strips is invaluable for coding an art piece in place.

I bought one to play with, and I've just bought some more and some of the sensor boards. Can't wait to get my hands on them.

Edit - December 2018 - I just came back to say that the support I've gotten from Ben has been unbelievably good. He has gone above and beyond in both responsiveness to questions, suggestions, and helping me out when I made a boneheaded mistake. This is now my go-to device for spinning up quick blinky projects and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Avatar
Response from ElectroMage | June 4, 2018
Bob,
Thank you! I'm glad you are having fun, and I hope the sensors expansion board works out well for you!

Janos | April 21, 2018

The best thing what you can buy for lighting

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

This is the most amazing controller for neopixel and dotstar what ever seen!!!!!
I using arduino and particle photon ,Adafruit and many different methods to programming these lights source but I never seen before than easier like this way !!! No need to install any thing at all!! Just modifies on the fly , instant working. is the best way to full controll your lights without any error message like in arduino, there lot of error message...grrr:)) i hate that , take lot of time to figure out what is actually is the problem, look I know ...time is matter..
And this is for me The Great Solution for me to take the heavy work to "how to figure out to how the f%%% to working" if I just want to working to what I want!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH YOU TAKE YOUR TIME TO MAKE THIS ,I AM VERY APPRECIATED WITH MUCH LOVE
(what about Esp 32:))
You are an Amazing! just remember ...you give me a big gift, Thank You
Warm regards,
Jacsi from Palma
Avatar
Response from ElectroMage | April 21, 2018
Thank you, this made my day! I'm glad you enjoy Pixelblaze! I am working on an ESP32 version as well :)

Charles | Dec. 23, 2017

Brilliant product, great seller!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

The product is just brilliant. I love the unique take on managing LEDs. where there are cheap led kits online,. they cannot compete with the creativity of the effects achieved with the pixelblaze, and adding my own new effects is just maths, dont need to learn to program LED's directly!

Robert P. | Sept. 11, 2017

Amazing product!!

For ElectroMage Pixelblaze V2+ WiFi LED Controller

The Pixelblaze is an amazing piece of work. It does everything it is advertised to do. The effects it produces with a strip of Dot Star leds is like no other. I had no problem getting them to work other than I misread one sentence in the instructions. This did not stop the board from working, it just confused me when trying to find it on the wifi network. I has named it the same as my primary wifi. So I needed to reset it. I emailed the maker and he was very prompt in response with the method to reset the board. That took maybe two minutes and it was up and running with name I could now find easity in the wifi list. He has also addressed a problem with communicating with Safari with new software which I will be installing via his instructions. You should check out his website and check out his synthesizer build. I want one!! And tou will too!
Page 3 of 3
Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more.