I have not yet used an AVR with GCB, but have used an ATTiny85 with the arduino IDE, I know, I know... but the only reason for this was to take advantage of the AdaFruit Neopixel library capabilities to make a little display for someone using a 24 pixel circular ring. This NeoPixel library is really sweet and very fast and I was able to do some very cool animations that the user wanted. It all had to fit in a very small package and the ATtiny fit the bill as far as being able to run the AdaFruit library.
I got some of the animation ideas from this website...
The effects here worked very very well and are pretty easy to modify to make your neopixels do just about anything quite easily.
So here is the crazy idea, don't shoot me if this is just completly nuts...
Is it possible somehow to load the ATtiny with the neopixel library, read it out somehow (hex, I guess) and incorporate it in a GCB program to take advantage of the library's features that make using neopixels so easy in arduino land. Or maybe even crazier, and certainly WAY out of my comprehension, can the AdaFruit neopixel library be ported to GCB (just for the AVR, not PIC, as it seems that it really works well and I'm guessing they are taking advantage of something the AVRs have, again, I don't really have a clue here).
I was running the ATtiny85 at 16mhz, if I remember correctly, and the ease of making the neopixels do some amazing things, and trust me, they were VERY fast, was just amazing. I know we have a neopixel library, both hardware and bitbanging for the PIC. I saw a video from one of the forum members that had a pic cranked up to 64mhz and was doing some pretty speedy updates on a reel of neopixels, but it seems like the AdaFruit library is super capable and very very fast. I am also not sure that if bitbanging using a small pic like a 12F1840 or something that doesn't have the hardware ability to drive neopixels, the pic would be so tied up with keeping the timing perfect, it would be hard to do much else without screwing up the bitbanging proceedure.
The AdaFruit Neopixel library and the FastLed library are a very nice feature in arduino land and neopixels are so cheap now, this would be such a cool feature for GCB.
If this is nuts on my part, remember, its just another CRAZY idea, but you never know if you don't ask.
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What is it that you need from the Adafruit library that the GCB examples can't do?
I'm not sure what you are suggesting is possible - you would need to reverse engineer the hex, or combine the hex with the Adafruit library with the hex from your program.
Ultimately refresh/response speeds are governed by the timing requirements of the pixels.
I've managed to get Neopixel strips running on a 12F1572 which has less memory than a 12F1840 and really restricts the number of effects you can program in, however loops and datatables don't take up much memory. You can also edit down your code to remove unecessary things and use things such as bit shifting for effects.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I have not yet used an AVR with GCB, but have used an ATTiny85 with the arduino IDE, I know, I know... but the only reason for this was to take advantage of the AdaFruit Neopixel library capabilities to make a little display for someone using a 24 pixel circular ring. This NeoPixel library is really sweet and very fast and I was able to do some very cool animations that the user wanted. It all had to fit in a very small package and the ATtiny fit the bill as far as being able to run the AdaFruit library.
I got some of the animation ideas from this website...
https://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware/arduino/adruino-led-strip-effects/
The effects here worked very very well and are pretty easy to modify to make your neopixels do just about anything quite easily.
So here is the crazy idea, don't shoot me if this is just completly nuts...
Is it possible somehow to load the ATtiny with the neopixel library, read it out somehow (hex, I guess) and incorporate it in a GCB program to take advantage of the library's features that make using neopixels so easy in arduino land. Or maybe even crazier, and certainly WAY out of my comprehension, can the AdaFruit neopixel library be ported to GCB (just for the AVR, not PIC, as it seems that it really works well and I'm guessing they are taking advantage of something the AVRs have, again, I don't really have a clue here).
I was running the ATtiny85 at 16mhz, if I remember correctly, and the ease of making the neopixels do some amazing things, and trust me, they were VERY fast, was just amazing. I know we have a neopixel library, both hardware and bitbanging for the PIC. I saw a video from one of the forum members that had a pic cranked up to 64mhz and was doing some pretty speedy updates on a reel of neopixels, but it seems like the AdaFruit library is super capable and very very fast. I am also not sure that if bitbanging using a small pic like a 12F1840 or something that doesn't have the hardware ability to drive neopixels, the pic would be so tied up with keeping the timing perfect, it would be hard to do much else without screwing up the bitbanging proceedure.
The AdaFruit Neopixel library and the FastLed library are a very nice feature in arduino land and neopixels are so cheap now, this would be such a cool feature for GCB.
If this is nuts on my part, remember, its just another CRAZY idea, but you never know if you don't ask.
What is it that you need from the Adafruit library that the GCB examples can't do?
I'm not sure what you are suggesting is possible - you would need to reverse engineer the hex, or combine the hex with the Adafruit library with the hex from your program.
Ultimately refresh/response speeds are governed by the timing requirements of the pixels.
I've managed to get Neopixel strips running on a 12F1572 which has less memory than a 12F1840 and really restricts the number of effects you can program in, however loops and datatables don't take up much memory. You can also edit down your code to remove unecessary things and use things such as bit shifting for effects.