This is an amazing project and if you like WLED youβll also like Pixelblaze which is full-stack including a coding interface: https://electromage.com/pixelblaze
I keep intending to reinvent my own controller with an RP2040, but life gets in the way, so for the second year in a row, Iβm using a Pixelblaze to control the 950 LEDs on my Christmas tree. Itβs a continuous string (well, 19 strands of 50 lights connected), put on the tree in a zigzag pattern and manually mapped to a vaguely triangular 2-D shape. The patterns are mostly as downloaded from the Pixelblaze repository.
Iβd highly recommend Pixelblaze for getting a fairly complex setup working quickly.
I wish there was a way to flash this to existing hardware. Iβve already got my LEDs running on ESP32s and Iβd love to play with it, but I donβt want to have to wait for/pay for international shipping for essentially the same hardware.
Seems like a super cool project though! The effects look really cool and more βorganicβ than the WLED effects (to me at least), but I think Iβll just need to live vicariously through YouTubers on this one haha
I've used Pixelblaze for five different projects now and I'm extremely happy with it. My projects are all 3D-mapped LED sculptures and Pixelblaze is extremely easy to work with compared to some other controllers which only handle the data for you but leave the signal/pattern generation up to you to solve.
You still have to be able to hook up few wires and you'll need to be able to power your LEDs and understand your power needs there, but the live compilation in web based development platform (that's served by the device, no cloud) makes it really ideal for rapid prototyping and getting up and running quickly. No fussing with Arduino IDE or compile times. It's one of those things that "just works".
Another interesting new trend Iβve seen a few times recently: second-time founders who are not raising at all! Instead they are choosing to bootstrap to Series A or, use their profitability to defer raising inevitably.
There's a long tradition of that and honestly not really a 2018 thing imo. What it does say is that in the preceding years many people had exits and thus the raw visible numbers have gone up compared to decades past.
Ex: CEO of previous company (founded in 2007) as 3rd time founder didn't take money until the A round and was funded by his previous exits even though we were a semiconductor startup.
Hey, I co-founded Instacart and can offer some thoughts on this.
In most cases we are helping retailers create a new delivery experience for their customers, not replacing one that exists. It's actually quite complicated to operate our business and there are economies of scale that retailers benefit from by being part of a marketplace.
Also, when we talk to our customers about why they use Instacart, many of them do need groceries urgently, which is one of the reasons they use Instacart over alternatives. Most orders are delivered within 1-3 hours of being placed.
There are lots of small seed funds now! And many of them are new. This way we can lead seed rounds and so when a founder gets our money, they know they'll be done soon (lots of smaller investors will follow on quickly) and will be able to get back to work faster.
Fundraising is always the worst, so anything that helps founders get done faster is the right thing.
The only way I can see this as profitable is at a huge markup or they start stocking items themselves just like a grocery store does. I think people care less about what grocery stores the shopper goes to than getting the correct items. They should just have a food warehouse and stock stuff.
TL;DR: This bill attempts to disband The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which collects and sells information and research. The bill asserts that the agency is no longer important, since you can basically just Google it now.
The purpose in founding the NTIS was to ensure that information and research was available to U.S. industry, government, academia, and the public. This is especially the case for government-funded research, but also includes technical information from foreign and other sources.
It's like saying you don't need the U.S. Copyright Office any more because the record and movie labels do such a wonderful job making sure their content is widely available.
"Of the reports added to NTIS's repository during fiscal years 1990 through 2011, GAO estimates that approximately 74 percent were readily available from other public sources."
Yes, because proving that 26% of the material added is not readily available elsewhere proves their uselessness... Oh, and let's not forget that the mandate for them to be profitable did not exist until just before it started to become impossible for them to do so.
How long would work, you think? I think today people are loading the BTC at the office, but I'm not sure that'll be the most common case. Maybe a "more time" button would help?
