Configuration options

WS281x LED Status offers plenty of customisable options so you can make the plugin fit your needs well. This pages will attempt to explain most of them, if they are not obvious.

Strip settings

LED Strip settings can be accessed from the settings page in a pop-up modal. Explained:

• Strip type: the kind of your strip you have. For supported hardware, see this wiki page
• LED count: Number of LEDs you have on the strip. Please set this right as otherwise the effects will not scale right.
• LED Pin: GPIO pin that the LED Strip is connected to. Only pin 10 is allowed, as that is the only pin that can be used without root access.
• Frequency: Frequency used to drive the LEDs. 800,000hz (800Khz) should be suitable for most strips, only change if you know your strip takes a different frequency.
• LED channel: Unsure what this one is, don't change it!
• DMA channel: Raspberry Pi DMA channel to use. Changing this can have disastrous effects, for example DMA 5 can corrupt the file system.
• Invert: invert the signal, used with certain level shifters that invert the signal, so we can invert it too to balance things out.

Printing effects

The plugin can react to events fired by OctoPrint, and update the effect accordingly. Below are the events it currently reacts to:

• Connected (Also known as 'idle')
• Disconnected
• Print success
• Print paused
• Print failed (cancelled)

You can choose an effect for each event, or choose not to react at all. See the effects below.

Progress effects

The plugin can also track progress of heating and printing. Heating is configured to begin tracking when a blocking heating command such as M109 is sent to the printer, until something else is sent. Options for these effects include:

• Enabled
• Progress bar colour
• Base colour

For heating, there is also:

• Enable tracking tool heating
• Which tool to track: If you have a multiple extruder printer, you can enter the index of the tool you wish to track, with the first being 0
• Enable tracking bed heating

Effects

Printing event effects can be configured to be one of the below effects (visualisation coming soon!)

You can select a colour (ignored for rainbow effects) and delay for each effect, where delay is how long to wait between effects. Different effects look better with different delay values, for example pulse looks best with a low value, and the wipes like a higher value.

• Solid colour - fairly obvious, sets all LEDs to a colour.
• Color Wipe - wipe colour across, then blank
• Color Wipe 2 - wipe colour across, then back again.
• Pulse - fade brightness up and down
• Bounce - bounce 3 LEDs from one side to the other
• Rainbow - fade through the colours of the rainbow.
• Rainbow cycle - cycle the rainbow along the LEDs

Other features

M150 intercept (New in 0.4.0)

Plugin will intercept M150 commands, and display them on the LED strip. Commands should be formatted as below: -

M150 [P<intensity>] [R<intensity>] [G<intensity>] [B<intensity>] [W<intensity>]

Parameters

• P: Brightness, max 255. If not included, defaults to set brightness within plugin settings.
• R: Red intensity, max 255.
• G: Green intensity, max 255 (Can also be U for Marlin compatibility)
• B: Blue intensity, max 255
• W: White intensity, max 255. Overrides any previous R, G or B value, to set white.

All of the parameters are optional, and can be included in any order. Sending an empty M150 command turns the LEDs off. (This is not recommended! Please see @ Commands below)

Examples:

M150 R255 G255  # Sets LEDs to yellow
M150 G238 B255  # Sets to light-ish blue
M150 W100       # Sets to white, at 100 intensity
M150 R255 P200  # Sets LEDs to red, at 200 brightness

@ Commands (New in 0.4.0)

(From OctoPrint's documentation)

@ commands (also known as host commands elsewhere) are special commands you may include in GCODE files streamed through OctoPrint to your printer or send as part of GCODE scripts, through the Terminal Tab, the API or plugins. Contrary to other commands they will never be sent to the printer but instead trigger functions inside OctoPrint.

The plugin reacts to two @ commands, named:-

• @WS_LIGHTSON: Turns lights on, same as pressing switch in navbar.
• @WS_LIGHTSOFF: Turns lights off.

You may want to use these in gcode scripts, or at the end of a file.