Control WS281X LEDs from a Raspberry Pi using TypeScript / Node.js

This is a Node.js / Node-API wrapper around the rpi-ws281x library.

• Raspberry Pi (Tested on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B). NOTE: It will NOT work on Raspberry Pi 5, see: jgarff/rpi_ws281x#528 for details.
• A WS281X LED Strip, for example one of the many Adafruit NeoPixels
• Node.js v18.x or later

Note: This package will only work on a Raspberry Pi.

npm install piixel

# or if you prefer to install it system-wide
npm install -g piixel

See API documentation and the examples directory.

This will light up all LEDs in different colors of the color wheel.

// example.ts

import {colorwheel, StripType, ws281x} from 'piixel'

const LEDS = 16

// Configure the library. Must be called before calling `render`.
// See APIDocs for the full list of options
// https://github.com/bjoerge/pipixel/blob/main/docs/piixel.ws281xconfig.md
ws281x.configure({
  gpio: 18,
  leds: LEDS,
  type: StripType.WS2811_STRIP_GRB,
})

const pixels = new Uint32Array(LEDS)
for (let i = 0; i < LEDS; i++) {
  pixels[i] = colorwheel((i * 256) / LEDS)
}

// Render pixels to the LED strip
ws281x.render(pixels)

// Optionally, render with brightness
ws281x.render({pixels, brightness: 0.4})

Use ts-node or tsx to run

tsx ./example.ts

Note: Depending on which GPIO pin you use, you might need to run the script with sudo. See the README of rpi-ws281x for more information.

• Thanks to Jeremy Garff for writing and maintaining the rpi-ws281x C library.

• This project has taken a lot of inspiration from meg768/rpi-ws281x. It originally started as an attempt to make it work on a Raspberry Pi 4b, but I kept running into issues with random memory corruptions, so figured I'd instead write something from scratch using the Node-API, which is more stable and future-proof than the legacy Native Abstractions for Node.js (NAN) used in that module. After the rewrite, the memory corruptions were gone.

MIT