PixelGuru by LightNinja
Design synchronised LED shows for poi, staffs, hoops and any prop you can build. Choreograph to music in Studio, start the show from your phone, and every prop plays its part on its own clock – in step to about 2 ms.
Free. Works offline on stage. No account needed.
The PixelGuru system
Five pieces that fit together: design on a laptop, perform from a phone, render on the prop, learn as you go.
Show designer
A music timeline for light. Layer effects, per-LED patterns and POV pictures, shape brightness curves, group props into rigs and watch it all on a 3D stage with real POV trails.
Performer app
Load a .pgshow, map slots to props, run preflight and press play. Blackout, master brightness and battery status sit under your thumb.
ESP32 LED props
Firmware 3 stores the compiled show in flash and renders it with the same engine as Studio – bit-identical. Microsecond clock sync, show ownership and re-attach, OTA with rollback.
Studio in the browser
The full editor with nothing to install: design, preview in 3D and export a .pgshow. Connect a desktop Studio or the Launcher to go live on props.
Interactive handbook
Build a prop, wire the board, learn every effect with live engine demos, plan the show day. Bilingual, searchable, and it works offline.
How it works
The show never depends on the WiFi holding up. Each prop carries its whole part and renders it as a pure function of show time.
Choreograph in Studio on a music timeline. Auto-show drafts a first version from the beat analysis if you want a head start.
Studio compiles one small PGSB file per prop. The Launcher uploads them in parallel and verifies every byte with SHA-256.
Press play. A 10 Hz beacon keeps every prop on the phone’s clock, so seeks, loops, pauses and late joins land exactly.
Downloads
The Launcher for Android and desktop, firmware images and the cloud server – free, and published with SHA-256 checksums.
Show designer: in the browser now, desktop again with 3.4.1.
The Studio 3.4.0 desktop installers are not offered: that build bundled the GPL-licensed Ableton Link library. They return with 3.4.1. Until then, use Web Studio – the same editor in your browser.
Open Web StudioPerformer app for phones and laptops.
For ESP32-S3 and classic ESP32 props.
Easiest route: Studio flashes firmware over USB and updates props over WiFi for you.
Run your own cloud: accounts, sync, teams and a community library.
Optional: the hosted cloud at cloud.lightninja.io needs no server of your own.
Updated from get.lightninja.io
Every file is listed in SHA256SUMS. Compare the hash of your file with the line for it.
The Windows installers are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn on first run. The checksum tells you the file is exactly the one we published.
Prefer not to install anything? Open Web Studio in your browser.
Get-FileHash .\<file> -Algorithm SHA256
(Invoke-WebRequest https://get.lightninja.io/SHA256SUMS).Contentcurl -fsSLO https://get.lightninja.io/SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing
# macOS: shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missingCommunity
Patterns, palettes, POV pictures, PixelScript effects, prop profiles and whole show templates – shared by performers, free to try live before you add them.
cloud.lightninja.io
Browse and publish from Studio › Cloud › Community library. Every card is a live preview, remixes credit the original automatically, and every item carries an open licence.
Open Web Studioacademy.lightninja.io
How publishing, versions, remixes, licences and reporting work – and what the moderators check before a plugin goes public.
Read the guideAbout
LightNinja is the studio of Jan Horák in Šumperk, Czech Republic. It started in 2020 with smart LED strips; PixelGuru grew out of years of building shows and gear for fire and LED performers.
PixelGuru 3 replaces the ShowMaker web editor, the old Android app and firmware 2.15. It imports old ShowMaker shows one to one and upgrades 2.15 props over WiFi, so nobody’s rig is left behind.
Šumperk · 49.965° N, 16.971° E
Shows live on the props. A dropped WiFi packet never shows on stage.
Documented file formats, an OSC/HTTP API, Companion and Chataigne modules.
No cookies, no trackers, and the cloud is optional – everything works offline.
Contact
Write to us – in Czech or English. We read everything and usually answer within a few days.
Email hello@lightninja.ioEmail only: no forms, no chat widgets, nothing that tracks you.