Universe Cycle effect

[Mombonav]

Take a look at the wiki and FAQ, perhaps your question is already answered!
FAQ

Please consider asking your question on the WLED forum or Discord
Forum
Discord
What to post where?

If you do not like to use these platforms, delete this template and ask away!
Please keep in mind though that the issue section is generally not the preferred place for general questions.

[Aircoookie]

Here is fine!

[Mombonav]

Aircoookie, please consider the following suggestion for a non-holiday effect. It would be a nice effect to have in the evening any time of year. I call it universe and it represents the lifecycle of stars and our planets. It is meant for a longer strip of LEDs (i.e. along the front of a house but could be compressed). It also reminds me of my early Air Force career when I learned to navigate with the stars. We don’t do that anymore!

I think this would be a complex, time consuming effect. You have done so much for the community with the development of WLED, so if this idea is too much work please just say so. Perhaps the project could be broken down into parts and developed by multiple people or simplify the pattern to just the living stars portion (with or without the planets option). Development could occur over successive releases. Changes to the general description below to make coding easier are ok too!

The basic concept is for an effect which starts with a "big bang" to create the stars, the "living period of stars" and the collapse of the stars into a black hole before the cycle repeats itself.

Generally, the stars will be flickering white and off-white of various intensities while the planets of our solar system will be their representative colours.
Mercury- Grey; Venus - an orange&yellow; Earth - Blue; Mars - Red; Jupiter - orange/brown and blue/white; Saturn - Pale gold; Uranus - Aquamarine; and Neptune - Deep blue.

Planet sizes (#leds)
Mercury- 1; Venus - 2; Earth - 2; Mars - 1; Jupiter - 4; Saturn - 3; Uranus - 3; and Neptune - 2.
All stars: - 1

Big Bang:

Led strip starts all dark.
A single LED lights up white in the middle of strip and slowly brightens to 50% full intensity as other LEDs light up on either side. These brighten slowly to 50% as the next set on either side lights up. This pattern continues until there are 15 or so white LEDs all at 50% then they all flicker/blink as a group a few times, growing in intensity until the last time in which they blink rapidly at full brightness and suddenly explode out to either side, shooting stars out to the end of the strip in each direction. The number of stars would be a random percentage of the number of LEDs in the strip length in each direction. The number would likely be less than 50% to avoid it looking crowded. Their positions in the strip would be random. The randomness ensures that successive patterns are different each time.

Living Stars:

Once the stars have shot out and stopped in their final positions, they would cool off by dimming down to their final brightness levels. This would be random for each star, some would dim a lot, some would stay bright. Once they are all at their final brightness they would twinkle for a few minutes before starting the next phase.

Optional: Some of the stars would turn into the planets of our solar system with sizes and colours above. Their position wouldn’t matter as long as the are in the correct order when viewed from left to right.

Universe Collapse:

The furthest out stars or planets start moving inwards towards the centre of the LED strip until they meet their adjacent star or planet (which have remained stationary until this point). Then they join and continue moving inwards collecting all the other stars/planets. When all the stars/planets have been collected and reach the centre LED they collapse one by one into a black hole (the centre LED which always remains black) until none are left.

Then the cycle repeats itself.

If possible, it would be nice to be able to have the user set the middle position to something other than the actual middle LED to account for how the strip wraps around the parts of the house. For me, the actual middle is on a segment which comes out perpendicular to the house and wouldn’t be visible until it comes around the corner.

Thanks for just considering this idea and for all your contributions. WLED is a fantastic LED controller!

[Aircoookie]

Just wanted to say that I LOVE your idea!
Essentially simulating the life cycle of the solar system and universe would be awesome to have as a lighting effect!
I don't know though how quickly I'd be able to get started on it since it is a very detailed effect, there would be quite a lot of code required.
Another additional idea that I got while reading yours is a Solar system effect which just has a fixed, white sun in the middle and planets, with their accurate color scheme and order, slowly orbiting around the sun. That could then be a good starting point for your proposal :)

[Mombonav]

Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it. Very happy to have you start with your proposal!!
Looking forward to what you come up with.

Thanks so much for your ongoing commitment to WLED and its community.
Keep up the excellent work!