ESP8266 Community Forum

- Fri Jul 15, 2016 5:10 am #50789 Hi, it's the serial speed that is killing you.
If your running serial at 115,200 bps, with 512 bytes per universe.
512 bytes per universe = 4,096 bits per universe.
4 universes = 16,384 bits per frame.
10 FPS (100mS) = 160,348 bps.
20 FPS (50mS) = 327,680 bps.
40 FPS (25mS) = 655,360 bps.

Basicaly you will only get 2 full universes in real time over a 115,200 bps serial connection and then only at 10 FPS and thats only including data bits.

SPI is faster, I have been able to read 200 universes per second from an SD card, but I'm guessing your already using SPI for your outpit to the pixels.

The Due has 4 serial ports, it's messy but you could hang 4 ESP's off them and Unicast from Vixen.

- Fri Jul 15, 2016 5:58 am #50790 Have you tried cranking up the serial port speed? 921K works on the ESP UART. Not sure about Due serial ports.

- Sat Jul 16, 2016 8:48 am #50850 I cranked the serial speed all the way up to 2,000,000 bps and it still doesn't work. I am reading the serial data on my PC using an FTDI serial to USB adapter and Putty.

I did a test using an E1.31 test program and everything works fine at 100ms (10 FPS). Anything faster and it gets backed up. It looks like it's a hardware limitation to me. The ESP8266 just can't process the incoming data that fast.