Topic: Smart LEDs aka LIFX, HUE etc...?
While I'm very new to the world of stop motion, I have a little more experience working with automated RGBW LED lighting (see- https://www.hackster.io/humblehacker/sm
offset=3).
I"m not doing anything thus far which would require a DSLR, so for the most part I've been very happy with the HD webcam with manual focus sold by StopMotion Explosion. The only issue I've had is that quite unlike my experience with DSLR, the webcam seems to be overly sensitive to white lighting, no matter how much I try to soften it.
In one of my earlier non-animation-related projects, I was researching how best to use LEDs for indoor grow lights and I discovered that RGBW LEDs allow you to use only the spectrum required by the plant (which was basically pink, since all plants reflect green light...) Than it dawned on me that something similar may apply to lighting and animation set!
I've got one very smart bulb in a LIFX and four "pretty smart" bulbs which are much cheaper and variously marketed as LimitlessLED, MiLight, EasyBulb etc... As far as I can tell based on early impressions it seems to work much better! I've basically just been using the Lifx as my key light, and one LimitlessLED to offset the shadows from the Lifx and another placed underneath the blue-sky backdrop.
Now I had read elsewhere on this forum about how using LEDs can cause flicker because of an issue with the way PWM is used to control luminosity. Thus far I haven't had too many issues with flicker, except on one particular color setting on the Lifx. But in this case, the flicker is very much visible to the naked eye and probably just has to do with an electrical glitch since the video seems fine in any other setting.
As an aside, I've always found it interesting when a a lighting-dependent activity (be it photography, indoor gardening, animation, interior design etc...) makes the transition from halogen/flourescents to leds and users expect them all to have the same characteristics... After all, an LED light bulb is really just a bunch of smaller diodes clumped together into a form that mimics a familiar shape. But the only reason they're produced in that form is because most of our houses and workplaces are designed around technology that hasn't advanced since Thomas Edison.
Now that I've got my mini-rant out of the way, I'd like to hear how others have utilized LEDs, (whether they be digital,analog RGBW, bulbs strips, individually addressable, Arduino/Neopixel etc...) in their productions. I'm especially intrigued about more creative ways of utilizing an Arduino controller in tandem with a capture program. I know some programs include Arduino plugins to sync the LED flicker in tune with the frame/capture rate, but I'm thinking about going way beyond that to trigger different lighting patterns based on multiple individually addressable RGB LEDs scattered throughout the set? Has anybody done anything like that? I'd love to hear?