Use FadeCandy with an USB hub connector

[tommyerols]

I would like to talk to a fadecandy board from my upython. The object being to send images to my Adafruit Neopixel 8x8. It seems like connecting the upython and fadecandy through a USB hub would be a simple way.
Is this possible? Do I need a PyUSB library? Is there one?
thanks
Tom

[dhylands]

At one point in time, Damien got a keyboard plugged into the pyboard to work:
https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/212

But I'm not sure of the status. Host mode is generally harder because the host normally has drivers and things to deal with individual devices.
Damien is away for a week, so he won't be able to answer until he gets back.

[nekomatic]

A USB hub doesn't work like an Ethernet hub - as dhylands says, you would need the micropython board to act as a USB host, and get it to support the appropriate USB device class. Unless there's some way of driving the Fadecandy with a "TTL" serial signal, which you could provide from one of the micropython UARTs, it might be easier to either get an Arduino-compatible board or chip to drive the LEDs - again you can easily send serial data from the micropython - or drive them directly from the micropython board as some other posters have reported doing successfully?

[Architekt]

I would like to talk to a fadecandy board from my upython. The object being to send images to my Adafruit Neopixel 8x8. It seems like connecting the upython and fadecandy through a USB hub would be a simple way.
Is this possible? Do I need a PyUSB library? Is there one?
thanks
Tom

I think much simplier would be connect 8x8 NeoPixels board directly to pyboard. I prepared driver for NeoPixels so you can play with your board from MicroPython easily. Info is here: http://forum.micropython.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=394

I tested it only with 16 LEDs ring yet. But I hope it will work with 64 LEDs without any problems. I would like to hear your experience if you try it.

[tommyerols]

Thanks for your replies. It might be easier, as you said, to avoid the fadecandy. I will try that out. But the promise of that simple code to map a png image right onto the 8x8 pixels is still alluring. Well, it is all just a hobby, so solving the problem is the journey, now, isn't it? Will get back to ya all in a few weeks.