DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

How I made my own DIY “Pixelstick” for $22

Mar 18, 2020 by Dirk Essl 3 Comments

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

You might know the Pixelstick. “nothing compares” is one of their statements. And this is true. At least price-wise. The Original Pixelstick retails for EURO 399,– here in Germany. I have always wanted one to at least try out some lightpainting with it.

The Pixelstick is a 188cm RGB lightstrip on a stick that plays bitmap files. It weighs 1,6kg, has a nice display to select files, has a remote release and runs on 8 AA batteries. Oh and it comes in a nice bag. Still 399,– is a bit steep.

The DIY approach

So I decided to build my own Pixelstick. As I have never handled the real thing, I don’t know the kind of features it has, but I know exactly which features I want in a device like this:

  • USB powered
  • SD Card Slot
  • Display to select files
  • Custom values for
    • Brightness
    • Speed
    • Start delay
    • Repeat times
  • Small
  • Lightweight

Luckily, Michael Ross already built something like this and it has some of the features, that I want. Software wise it runs an Arduino sketch. Hardware wise I think it is a bit dated and way to big. I am not a fan of the large Arduino MEGA and the LCD Display shield as it makes the device unnecessarily large, so I decided to swap some parts.

The LCD display alone is already bigger than my complete controller

I chose an Arduino MEGA 2560 Pro, a small OLED Display, a Micro-SD reader and a digital joystick, as the display does not come with buttons.

I sourced everything from aliexpress here are all the parts that I have used:

  • 144 pixels/leds/m WS2812 Smart RGB Led Light Strip Black/ PCB 
  • MEGA 2560 PRO Embed CH340G/ATMEGA2560-16AU Chip
  • 4pin 0.96″ White/Blue/Yellow blue 0.96 inch OLED 128X64
  • Five Direction Navigation Button Module for MCU
  • Micro SD card mini TF card reader module SPI interfaces
  • MICRO USB To DIP Adapter 5pin Female Connector B Type 

Total cost EURO 20,27 (almost 20 times less then the Pixelstick)

You also need a Micro USB cable, some wire, a soldering iron, solder, electrical tape and something to mount the LED strip on. I chose a piece of wood. For the case I used an old bluetooth receiver that I have no use of anymore. To program your Arduino you need the Arduino IDE.

Pinout

Pinout on the Mega PRO is different, at least on the Version that I bought. The LED strip only needs 1 connection beside power, as it gets controlled through the PWM chip that lives on the Arduino. On mine pin 6 is a PWM pin. I power the LED strip directly from the Powerbank which is attached via Micro-USB. Please make sure to connect GND of the LED strip to GND of the Arduino or your strip will display false LEDs because of signal noise.

Pins for the OLED display are easy to find. beside GND and VCC it needs SDA and SCL, pins 20 and 21, respectively.

The SD card reader needs some more ports, but all are grouped together. 50, 51, 52, 53

The buttons are wired to digital pins, using the internal pull up resistor (activated in the Arduino sketch) I use pins 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

For reference here the complete circuit for the components I used

Soldering and building the case only took a few hours, a Saturday well spent.

Software

I took the sketch from Michael and removed the libraries for the LCD Shield, which also handles button presses, rewrote the function that watches for keys and rewrote the parts that would display text on the display. I also implemented EEPROM saving of the brightness setting, all the other values are fine from the start and seldom need tweaking.

Thanks to the great Arduino community, figuring out how to address the different modules was easy enough for me, even not being a very seasoned programmer. There is for sure room for improvement, but at the moment it does what I need and I can always come back to the code in case I need a new feature or find a bug.

Here some more pictures of ‘lighty’ and of curse some results. Oh by the way, ‘lighty’ weighs only 240 grams (without battery). I am really happy, how this turned out. Only thing missing is a diffusion panel in front of the LEDs, but even the “8-bit” look is fine with me for now.

About the Author

Dirk Essl is an IT Solution Architect working for a German television network. He is very passionate and nerdy about various operating systems – he’s not a programmer, but he likes writing software if something that he needs is not available. He also runs caffenol blog and the biggest caffenol community on the web.

You can see more of Dirk’s work on his website and follow him on Facebook and YouTube. This article was also published here and shared with permission.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

These guys built a giant DIY “pixelstick” and mounted it to a drone to light paint in the air Light painting tools war: PixelStick Vs Magilight How I created my own DIY camera timer for $50 How to build your own DIY track dolly for under $50

Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: Dirk Essl, diy build, diy photography gear, DIY project, light painting, PixelStick

Guest Author: from diyphotography.net

About Guest Author

We love it when our readers get in touch with us to share their stories. This article was contributed to DIYP by a member of our community. If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us here.

« This comprehensive tutorial will make a portrait master with Capture One
Imaging Resource website will live on after acquisition by Madavor Media »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Learn photography

Recent Posts

  • Adobe ordered to pay more than $33 million for patent infringement
  • Hands on with the Kelvin Epos 600 RGBLAC light
  • Hands on with the Godox MG2400Bi LED beast
  • Hands on with the Saramonic WiTalk
  • Another tourist falls off a cliff while taking a selfie

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy