> but WLED/ESP32 doesn't really tick the large box for me
Sure, you can only run about 2,000 pixels off a single ESP32 running WLED, but there’s no reason you can’t run a bunch of them. I have seven ESP32s driving just shy of 10k pixels myself and I’d personally consider that a large display. I dunno about you, but 3,300 watts of light is definitely not “small scale”.
For a home Christmas light display or something similar - I guess 10k can count as large. (I’m running ~14k, about 1100 of them from WLED). For commercial/art installations - I don’t think that’s “large” though.
Something like a f16v4 can run 33k pixels. But maybe you want more points of control remotely distributed?
Ah, I see what you mean, yes, commercial displays could easily be much larger. But more often than not, they are driven from a video signal. I looked into the commercial grade LED matrix panels from China. Price wasn’t bad itself considering how many LEDs, but shipping would’ve been $1500/panel and then you also need to buy all the hardware too (as they aren’t WS28xx or similar compatible).
What are you using for the rest? Another controller or at they static? My ~10k is all individually addressable ws28xx lights (mostly 5V LEDs, but I buck convert immediately before the strips and run back at 24V.
I’ve definitely seen way bigger than both of our setups,
I’ve got a pair of these: https://pixelcontroller.com/store/products/70-f16v4.html on either side of the house - local to where the bulk of the pixels are (2 x megatrees and a matrix). And a couple of recievers out from there to other points.
Sure, you can only run about 2,000 pixels off a single ESP32 running WLED, but there’s no reason you can’t run a bunch of them. I have seven ESP32s driving just shy of 10k pixels myself and I’d personally consider that a large display. I dunno about you, but 3,300 watts of light is definitely not “small scale”.