PS effects do not work on large setups

[nomonkeynodeal]

What happened?

Configuration
3936 LEDs, 3x Dig-Quads

Two of the ESP32s are directly connected to roughly half the LEDs each. The third is the master controller that does nothing but run the effects via DDP to the slave controllers. (This configuration yields by far the highest frame rate of the many I tried.)

I have no way of identifying which version of WLED is currently working, but it was the latest nightly on 5/2/25. This version is of course buggy and will constantly reboot if I change PS effects a lot, and it virtually always says "Error 8: Effect RAM depleted!" in the UI.

That said, it will run a playlist of mostly PS effects all day without crashing.

Issue
Nightly 20250630 will not run any PS effects at all. The LEDs do not light up. Regular effects do work.

There was another nightly (I think it might have been 5/28?) that did run PS effects, but they were extremely unstable to the point where I had to roll back.

Please let me know if there are any debugging steps and I can take and report back.

To Reproduce Bug

.

Expected Behavior

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Install Method

Binary from WLED.me

What version of WLED?

WLED_0.16.0-alpha_ESP32_Ethernet.bin Nightly Release 20250630

Which microcontroller/board are you seeing the problem on?

ESP32

Relevant log/trace output

Anything else?

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[DedeHai]

that is simply too many leds, you are running out of effect RAM. Buffer can be increased but it is yet TBD if that has any negative effects in other places.

[nomonkeynodeal]

Is there a way I could try increased buffer? Like I said, the older version is running pretty well once I stop rapidly changing effects.

[DedeHai]

There were big changes that trade the use of more RAM for speed. Increase MAX_SEGMENT_DATA.

[nomonkeynodeal]

Thanks. I made a video for you or anyone working on PS effects: https://files.catbox.moe/bi6y6i.mp4

[netmindz]

It would be very interesting to know if this could use Octal SPRAM (where available) - If it's fast enough to be used for the HUB75 driver, I would have thought it would be fast enough for effects

(Note: I'm not actually using the SPIRAM_FRAMEBUFFER currently as memory was less of an issue once we moved away from using the doublebuffer feature of the driver)

[blazoncek]

Large set-ups do need extensive testing. By willing people.

[nomonkeynodeal]

I will try anything, but I don't know how helpful I can be without a dev environment. I do have a similar 2600 LED matrix that is very accessible in case I have to reflash. All Dig-Quads.

[blazoncek]

You will need 4096 or larger with 0.16 debug build. For that you'll need S3 or classic ESP32.
For debug build, you'll need to compile and upload for yourself as otherwise you'll be missing exception decoder which is crucial for getting meaningful crash dumps.
Please ask for help on Discord or forum.

[DedeHai]

@debcsibacsi not sure what your setup is, I get 60+ FPS even on demanding FX like soap on 32x32

[blazoncek]

@debcsibacsi please open a new issue as what you are describing has no relation to "non working" PS effects.

[DedeHai]

I ran some checks, PS works up to about 5000 LEDs.
The PS still uses a local rendering buffer which should be dropped and the segment buffer should be used instead. I will look into that.
@blazoncek the PS would require direct access to the pixels pointer of a segment. getPixels() is a protected function. I think there are two options: make the PS a friend class (good?) or make getPixels() public (bad). Any other options? I never used friend class before, is it straight forward or is there anything to look out for?

[blazoncek]

If you make PS a friend of Segment class then you get direct access to pixels via getPixels() (as it is protected). However you can also use setPixelColorRaw() or getPixelColorRaw() which are wrappers for direct array access without any overhead.

The only change needed is the addition of friend class ParticleSystem1D; and friend class ParticleSystem2D; into Segment class declaration.
Just be careful what you do with pixels (do bounds check).

[DedeHai]

@nomonkeynodeal please test #4776