Thinking out loud
Things can look like they’re going to work really well, and then just don’t.
This is also tomorrow’s lesson.
Case in point:
I tried to give each pixel of the trail a different acceleration curve, so that they trail behind and (later) fade out.
Mixed results. The different acceleration curves for the pixels mean that they change relative distances between each other, which reads as weird jitter.
More work needed.
As I start to look online for resources for pixel animation planning, I find one inadvertently on the Adafruit Learning Center for animating NeoPixels using bitmaps.
Which is literally, exactly what I'm trying to figure out this second. Except I'm using C++, which is an extra wrinkle. Still, really useful read.
Bless Adafruit. And I'm not just saying that because of this; I owe the Adafruit NeoPixel Uber Guide for saving me many costly learning experiences in the design of the Witch Lights.
I wonder, would it be easier to design the animation bitmap if I used the horizontal axis for time, instead of the vertical axis?
It would be an interesting scripting challenge.
I made the changes to the Witch Lights animation from last night, and am happy with the progress so far. It's not done, but progress is being made.
This is a big improvement. Interestingly, on my other computer, the keyboard repeat rate is faster, which results in a higher framerate. That's making a big difference in the effect of the animation.
In this video above, the sprite appears to accelerate a bit too quickly, and then when it stops short, the tail isn't long enough.
Above, I adjusted the frame rate down (by using the keyboard control panel), and now the speed of acceleration and braking seem ok. But, when the sprite stops short, the tail doesn't shrink from the left quickly enough.
So: framerate is a variable to control for.
I have to upload my code to the Witch Lights development board and watch the actual animation on the NeoPixels to see what kind of framerate I'm getting.
So, next actions:
Connect development Arduino to my mac and upload the current code
Connect a simple push-button up to the sensor pin on the Arduino to simulate the motion sensor
Take the 5-meter cheapo NeoPixels I just got from AliExpress and connect them to my NeoPixel strip test rig, which will verify that the pixel strip is good
Hook the (hopefully good) pixel strip to the development board, and power it on. If everything is good, I'll see a pride-flag test pattern
Test the current known-good code with the push button, verify that it triggers sprite object creation and animation
Create a new Animation Test Sprite class, copying the current Sprite object class, and tell the motion sensor objects to trigger generation of that class, not the default class
Export the animation to CSV from Excel
Run the csv2cpp python script on that CSV file and copy the generated code
Insert the generated code into the appropriate segment of the Witch Lights Arduino sketch, and compile/upload the code to make sure nothing breaks.
Modify the Animation Test Sprite class so that in Scanner mode, it looks at the array of strings tagged with the animation name.
Also change the global variables for animation frame width and animation frame count (create new globals for now, refactor this later)
Compile and upload the code, which -- in theory -- should result in the Witch Lights animating my new sprite animation when I hit the go button.
Simple.
Later, I'll work out a master class for sprites with different animations, and make all the different animation sprites children of that, but for now it's gonna be messy.
Because the point is to see the framerate of the animation on the Arduino and NeoPixels.
And then I'll adjust the framerate on my computers (by messing with Keyboard preferences) to match as closely as possible.
What a horrible hack this is. I'm absurdly proud.
