<16 port standalone controllers comparison

[MamboDiablo]

Hi All,

I'm new to xlights but I have experience working with arduino and ws2812b pixel strips.  In time I plan to purchase one of the 16+ port controllers such as the latest falcon, but for now I'm interested in purchasing something which is smaller and cheaper for mobile or portable applications (eg: such as on a bicycle) that does not require a PC to be running xlights.  The present controller comparison page only shows 16 port controllers however.

Is there a guide somewhere on smaller standalone controllers (such as a beaglebone) where an xlights sequence can be flashed to the controller and then run without the need for a laptop running the sequence in xlights?   

Thanks in advance :-)

[Gilrock]

Best option I believe is use a Raspberry Pi running the Falcon Pi Player (FPP) software with a Pi Cape on top and you would need to rig it to a battery pack.

There are a few cape options but I don't know where to buy them all except this one:
https://www.pixelcontroller.com/store/index.php?id_product=47&controller=product

[dkulp]

Depends on how many strings you need.   The Pi can do two strings.   A beagle based controller can do a lot more.    I have a couple different options with 8 outputs (F8-B and F8-PB):

https://kulplights.com

In both cases, you will need a USB sound adapter if you need sound for your mobile application.  The Pi's onboard sound needs to be disabled for the pixels to work.   The beagles don't have on-board sound.   

[MamboDiablo]

Hi guys thanks for the suggestions. I've considered the Pi + FPP option actually so I'll look into that in more detail. Mainly what I'm interested to do is to replace arduino with something that allows me to work with matrices effectively, since my rudimentary coding knowledge is a barrier with arduino alone.  For example, I own about 10x ws2812b strips (150 pixels). Until now I've just been using arduino and creating single strip effects (generally altering sketches already written by others). Building a matrix with those, say fold each strip into 3 sections = 30 x 50 matrix. Coding all that in arduino IDE is super clunky and laborious, but I know this can be done easily in xlights.

The portability aspect is so that I can install something customised anywhere without having to bring (and power) a laptop to run it all.

nb: I hope you guys can appreciate the fact that Burning Man brought me here haha ;-)

[Gilrock]

I don't know what Burning Man is but there is one guy that talks about it and he's definitely from another planet.

[bwinter]

Yeah, a PiHat is definitely what you need.  I’ve developed one that takes 12V input, then drops it down to 5V, 20A to power the Pi and the LEDs.  It’s a good set-up that works well for mobile applications

BTW: my inspiration for this all started from BM...