rpi-ws281x-csharp

This is a C# wrapper for the great C assembly by Jeremy Garff to control WS281X LEDs by a Raspberry PI (https://github.com/jgarff/rpi_ws281x). It uses the P/Invoke calls to access the native assembly.

Usage

It is very easy to use the wrapper in your own C# / .NET project. Just see the example below:

//The default settings uses a frequency of 800000 Hz and the DMA channel 10.
var settings = Settings.CreateDefaultSettings();

//Use 16 LEDs and GPIO Pin 18.
//Set brightness to maximum (255)
//Use Unknown as strip type. Then the type will be set in the native assembly.
settings.Channels[0] = new Channel(16, 18, 255, false, StripType.WS2812_STRIP);

using (var rpi = new WS281x(settings))
{
  //Set the color of the first LED of channel 0 to blue
  rpi.SetLEDColor(0, 0, Color.Blue);
  //Set the color of the second LED of channel 0 to red
  rpi.SetLEDColor(0, 1, Color.Red);

  rpi.Render();
}

Please have a look at the example program and get familiar with the usage.

Installation

In order to get the wrapper working, you need build the shared C library first. The required source code is included via a git submodule and is located under lib/rpi-ws281x. This is a link to the original project. Switch to the directory and execute following commands:

scons
gcc -shared -o ws2811.so *.o

The P/Invoke functinality has a special search pattern to find the required assembly. For my tests I copied the ws2811.so assembly to /usr/lib (as mentioned in the link above).

Test status

The wrapper was tested with following setup:

Raspberry model	Controller	GPIO Pin	DMA channel	Result
Model B Rev 2	WS2812B	18	5, 10	Success

Please feel free to add some more test cases.