PixDriveShows without code
In the sequencer you drag effects onto the timeline and set colours and timings. The preview shows you right away how it looks on the house.
Use case
Christmas and decorative lighting with LED pixels
Light-up house, shop window or trade fair booth: build your light show in PixDrive and let it run on its own from an SD card – no laptop next to it.
Free demo · No registration · Mac & Windows
Typical projects
- Light-up houses & gardens
- Shop windows
- Trade fair booths
- Christmas markets
- Trees & light strings
- Store decoration
The situation
Set it up once, light up every evening
Christmas and decorative lighting runs every evening for weeks, often outside in the garden or behind a shop window. A laptop has no business being there, and after setup nobody wants to adjust anything.
So you build the show in PixDrive at your desk, export it and copy it to a microSD card. A DIAMEX LED player or a WLED controller with the PixDrive SD expansion then plays it on its own. With AUTOSTART and a timer switch in front, the DIAMEX player starts by itself every evening.
Features
From idea to finished display
Standalone from an SD card
Export the show as a TPM2 file for a DIAMEX LED player or as a .wled file for a WLED controller with the PixDrive SD expansion. Both play it straight from the microSD card.
Starts at power-up
With AUTOSTART the DIAMEX LED player starts the show as soon as it has power. Put a timer switch in front and the display runs every evening by itself.
RGB and RGBW
PixDrive works with RGB and RGBW pixels such as WS2812B or SK6812. With the DIAMEX player, the player calculates the white channel; WLED files store RGB or RGBW directly.
Real-world example
Example: light-up house with 1,200 pixels
Roof line, two window frames and the fir tree in the front garden: four strings with 300 RGB pixels each (WS2812B) on a DIAMEX LED-Player-ME 2048. The show loops at 30 frames per second and starts as soon as the timer switch turns the power on.
On the DIAMEX player every output has the same LED count (S_LEDS). If a string is shorter, nothing shifts – the surplus values simply go nowhere. So create the fixtures in PixDrive in exactly the order of the outputs.
- Total pixels
- 1,200 RGB
- Outputs
- 4 × 300 pixels
- Player
- LED-Player-ME 2048 (max. 512 RGB per output)
- Frame rate
- 30 fps (player: max. 50)
- Start
- automatically at power-up
From practice
Tips that save you time
FAT32, not exFAT
The LED-Player-ME reads SD and SDHC cards up to 32 GB formatted as FAT32 or FAT16. It does not recognise larger SDXC cards with exFAT.
No .txt extension
Windows and macOS like to append .txt when saving. The file has to be named exactly _CONFIG_ – create it with a plain text editor, not Word.
Colours swapped?
Then COLOR_MAP is wrong. WS2812B usually expect G,R,B; RGBW pixels such as the SK6812 need four values, for example G,R,B,W.
Several animations with WLED
With the PixDrive SD expansion, every WLED segment plays its own .wled file. That way the tree and the roof line run independently.
More use cases
Where else PixDrive fits
Stage, events & clubs
Program pixel shows on your laptop, play them live over Art-Net or sACN and trigger them from the lighting console.
Facade & architecture
Plan light shows for facades and permanent installations, then play them straight from the controller without a computer.
Makers & WLED
Drive ESP32 and WLED over Art-Net or sACN, write your own effects in Lua and play shows from an SD card.
Get started
Try it with your own LEDs
The demo runs with no time limit and no registration. Test live effects, LED layout and the script engine with one device and one universe.
macOS 12+ · Windows 10 / 11 · No account required