LED light for Printing

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tpawyant

(@tpawyant)

Active Member

LED light for Printing

Hello, Community

I am looking for a way to connect an LED light strip or some other LED light system to light up the workspace while printing. I am currently running Octoprint from a Pi 4B on my MK3S+ MMU2 printer.

I am looking for the LED lights to come on white when the printer starts printing; even at the start-up, when the bed and nozzle heat up, it would be fine. I have seen several posts about connecting a LED strip to get all sorts of colors to show based on the state that the printer is in...not sure if there is an easy one to follow or not, but it looks a little complicated.

I check in on my printer during longer prints, and without a light, you can not see it when it gets dark in the room. I am currently using a Logitech C920 webcam connected to the Pi.

Any help or links would be great. If there are instructions that make connecting a 24v LED light strip to the printer and creating the color change based on printer status easy to follow, I would consider that.

Thanks!

Veröffentlicht : 31/05/2022 1:03 pm

jsw

(@jsw)

Famed Member

RE:

If you want smooth color changes and other visual effects you might want to look into what are called NeoPixels, which come in RGB and RGBW varieties. They come in strips, arrays, various patterns, and even individual units. They can be obnoxiously bright when lit at full luminance.

There are all kinds of code examples for doing colors and animation and such using the Pi or the Arduino/Feather. My guess is that the Pi 4b has more than enough 'oompf' to run both Octoprint and a LED display.

Neopixels need only three connections, 5 volt supply, ground, and data in. You daisy chain the data connections and each one uses the first command it sees and passes the rest down the chain.

Now as for powering the LEDs, I would use a buck converter off of the 24 volt supply. These are only a few US $ and are high in efficiency and do not get hot.

You may think of LEDs as low-power devices, but when you get into arrays/strips of multi-color LEDs, it can add up fast. I would not try to power these by using a spare 5v pin on the Pi or the Einsy. There is a warning with one array that I am playing with for a non-3d print project (32 x 8) that if you try lighting up all of them maximum bright white, the array can draw as much as 15 amps at 5 volts!

Veröffentlicht : 31/05/2022 4:28 pm