{"id":4575,"date":"2015-02-10T16:30:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T00:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=4575"},"modified":"2025-06-02T03:37:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T10:37:37","slug":"light-painting-with-ws2812-leds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/light-painting-with-ws2812-leds\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create Light Paintings with WS2812 LEDs"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine came into town for Christmas and I wanted to do some sort of photography project with him. A few months ago, there were\u00a0some pictures floating around the internet from Stephen Orlando, who took LEDs and attached them to a kayak paddle and kayaked around a lake, and through rapids. You can see his whole gallery here at\u00a0Motion Exposure Galleries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Light<\/a>
Light Painting by Stephen Orlando.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wanted to do something similar. The first night wasn’t very organized. We went into the woods with just the LED strip, the chipKIT board (the uC32), and a battery. We didn’t like the result we got with just carrying the strip, so we found a stick and wrapped the strip around it. We just used the rainbow example sketch from Adafruit’s NeoPixels.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>
This was the first good one we got on the first night and I think it’s the best.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Through<\/a>
Through the woods.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At the observatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"More<\/a>
More at the observatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"On<\/a>
On the field of the stadium.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second night, we thought it would be a good idea to attach the LED strip to something more solid than a stick we found in the woods. I wasn’t as happy with this set, but we did get some awesome pictures. My favorite one from both nights was the one in the “Zen Staircase.”<\/p>\n

\"Around<\/a>
Around the pond.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"In<\/a>
In the “Zen Staircase”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"On<\/a>
On the train bridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Under<\/a>
Under the bridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u00a0are\u00a0a few pictures of the setup we used. The LEDs on the stick are different than the ones we actually used, they are a higher density. I want to try it again. with the higher density ones to see what it would look like. Overall, I was happier with the ones from the first night. The patterns were less predictable and I really liked the way there were breaks in the lights from some of the LEDs facing away from the camera.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The stick.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The whole level.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What have you been able to do with your WS2812 LED strip?<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine came into town for Christmas and I wanted to do some sort of photography project with him. A few months ago, there were some pictures floating around the internet from Stephen Orlando, who took LEDs and attached them to a kayak paddle and kayaked around a lake, and through rapids. I wanted to do something similar. The first night wasn’t very organized. We went into the woods with just the LED strip, the chipKIT board (the uC32), and a battery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4327],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[4456],"class_list":["post-4575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Light-Painting-1.jpg","authors":[{"term_id":4456,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"logansam","display_name":"Samuel Logan","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a023dae7f67e8827e8337e946311c2c3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Logan","last_name_2":"","first_name":"Samuel","first_name_2":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4575"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31606,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions\/31606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4575"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}