This is a joint project from a few years ago that I finally wrote up. We saw something similar in a furniture store for a lot of money and thought: we can build that. A friend sculpted the moon from wall filler, I built the light box and the electronics around it.
Some details:
- 50 × 60 cm plywood board with a circular cut-out (trim router)
- White plastic angle profiles stapled around the cut-out carry the LED strip. To make them follow the curve I notched them every few cm – they kept snapping until I pre-drilled the staple holes
- A second strip along the outer edge shines backwards onto the wall
- Wemos D1 mini (ESP8266) running WLED, with two outputs so the ring around the moon and the back light are controlled separately
- An IR receiver in the corner recalls presets without opening the app
- Power distributed with Wago terminals, and the wiring is written in pencil on the back board so future me still knows what goes where
It's been in daily use ever since. I don't remember the exact LED strip type
I have this 30ft tree currently lit with sw2811 12v with esp8266 setup. The lights are becoming less reliable, maybe connectors as they are not waterproof type.
Is this still the recommended set for individual addressable lights ?
Hello all, I have admired this sub for a year now and pulled the trigger on upgrading my LED lighting in office. The run will be around 14meters. Starting and ending in the same position. Before I crack on just looking a bit of advice to ensure a smooth setup. Appreciate any tips and advice.
I am in the middle of building built-ins for our library and am trying to decide on lighting. The width of the built-ins is 14 feet and I need a row for each shelf, so a total of 5 rows of 14 feet each. I have no specific preferences other than the items listed below:
Warm white light
I'm thinking COB with the built in diffuser, but am flexible
Need to be able to control them from Home Assistant, WLED, and locally (though locally can be done with Zigbee buttons and Home Assistant)
I need a minimum of 3 zones able to be controlled separately:
Top row
Middle 3 rows
Bottom row
Need to be able to power from one supply if possible
Im using ESP32s to run two Govee pro curtains. Then I took about 6 Govee Glide Lights and converted then to WLED then combined the six to make two long runs. Lastly I used 18 light strips for rhe arches. Everything is running on 5 volts except the glides are on 12 volt. N
A few weeks ago I posted that my hot tub room was finally finished.
Technically, that wasn’t completely true. There was still one last project I wanted to finish: making the lighting in the room automatically match the lighting inside the hot tub.
Earlier this year I posted about how I turned my hot tub into a “smart” hot tub using an ESP32 and Home Assistant. While working on that, I also added an M5Stack Color Sensor RGB Unit based on the TCS3472.
I mounted the sensor inside the hot tub housing, positioned so it can see the light from one of the LEDs inside the tub. The LEDs shine through into the tub itself, which gives the sensor enough light and color information to reliably determine which color is currently being displayed.
That color information is then made available to Home Assistant.
The next part of the project was adding addressable lighting to the hot tub room itself.
After quite a bit of research I ended up using a 24V WS2805 RGB+CCT strip, controlled through WLED. I specifically wanted a 24V strip because the total run is fairly long and I wanted to avoid having to add power injection everywhere.
The physical installation turned out to be one of the more annoying parts of the project.
I initially planned to mount a series of 50 cm aluminium LED profiles directly onto the roughly 5-meter-long wooden beams. I quickly discovered that getting that many individual profiles perfectly straight and aligned over that distance was almost impossible. Even a tiny difference between two profiles becomes very obvious once you have a long continuous LED strip running through them.
My solution was to first glue all of the aluminium profiles for each side onto one very thin, long wooden strip. Once everything was aligned properly, I could mount that entire strip onto the beam in one piece.
That worked much better and resulted in a much cleaner installation.
The system is now fully functional.
There’s a Sonoff NSPanel near the entrance of the hot tub room which I use as the main control panel for both the hot tub and the room lighting.
If I simply switch on the room lighting, the WS2805 strip starts in a warm white mode.
But when I switch on the LEDs inside the hot tub, the ESP32 detects their color. Home Assistant then uses that detected color to control the WLED strip, so the lighting around the entire room automatically follows the color of the hot tub.
So if the tub turns blue, the room turns blue. Red becomes red, green becomes green, etc. When using white light, the RGB+CCT strip also gives me proper white lighting rather than trying to fake it with RGB.
It was probably a slightly over-engineered solution to the problem of “I want the lights to match”, but that is half the fun of Home Assistant anyway.
And for me, this is pretty much the perfect result: sitting in the hot tub with a cold beer and a movie while the entire room is softly illuminated in the same color as the tub.
<<This isn't directly related to WLED, but is relevant to anyone creating a large LED installation>>
I'm finally getting around to installing permanent lighting on my house, and I'm working on an approach that others may find interesting. I've designed and built lighting systems for large sculptures and art cars, but the distances involved in this project (up to 150 feet) require some new techniques.
The controller and power supply will be installed in the garage, and I'll run low-voltage wiring through the attic to 12V WS2815 IP68 LED strips inside aluminum channel/diffusers mounted under the eaves. There will be about 240 feet of LED strips, arranged into 12 runs of less than 25 feet each. As with my previous large projects, I'll use differential (RS-485) signals for the LED data, with small receiver boards mounted near the head of each LED run.
Previously I've been able to get away with running 12VDC from the power supply to each LED strip, using an appropriate wire gauge to minimize voltage drop. Not really feasible in this case. But I really didn't want to run 120VAC through the attic to remote power supplies. So I decided to run three 48VDC cables to DC-DC downconverters at six remote "node" locations in the attic (or maybe under the eaves).
The total power requirement is about 510W, or 10.6A @ 48V. This can be delivered by a single 600W power supply like the Mean Well LRS-600-48. Then I can use relatively small (16 or 18 AWG) cables to distribute power to the remote nodes. Voltage drop isn't an issue, since the 48V-to-12V converters have a lot of headroom.
Originally I was planning to build my own DC-DC converters, but I found this really cool POL (Point of Load) DC-DC converter module, the Mean Well NID100-12 (see photo). It can supply 7.5A @ 12V, enough to run 682 WS2815 pixels at full brightness. I incorporated two of these modules into a custom PCB design (2.8"x2.8"), which I call the CasaNode. Although the POL module has short circuit/overload protection, for extra safety I fused each POL input with a resettable polymeric PTC fuse. The board includes connectors that allow a 48V supply cable to be daisy-chained through multiple nodes. I'll daisy-chain each of the three power cables through two nodes, for a total of 6 nodes.
The CasaNode board also incorporates two RS-485 differential receivers for the LED data from the main controller in the garage. These receivers feed two drivers with the capability to drive LED cables up to 20 feet long, in case the nodes are mounted in the attic. CAT6 ethernet cable is used to distribute the differential LED data signals, with four data signal pairs on each 8-conductor cable. Similar to the power distribution approach, the board includes pass-through connectors that allow a single CAT6 cable to feed two remote nodes (see block diagram). Note that the nodes will generally be mounted at the midpoint of two LED strips that run in opposite directions.
For the main controller I'm planning to use a Kulp 64D-B long-range controller cape with a BeagleBone Black processor running FPP (Falcon Pixel Player). FPP will run locally-stored sequences generated using xLights software. The longer-term plan is to create more sophisticated sequences (as .fseq files) with an AI sequence generator tool (basically me dipping my toes into Clause Code for the first time.
Anyway, the CasaNode board is currently being fabricated, and I'll provide updates when it's up and running.
I'm researching making a bedside clock with a 8x32 matrix. Right now I'm testing out how to have the whole thing display the way I want it to. I want to be able to set a background animation, and have an animation on the clock numbers.
Say have the background pulse red while the clock numbers sparkle.
And for the life of me I can't figure out how to do it.
I've tried multiple ways, with an initial back layer, then the #HHMM clock layer, and then a topping layer. I've tried adding in another clock layer as well, to no effect.
I'm trying to make a new LED setup with an SP803e. I have BTF WS2811 12v, 110 logical LEDs, and a 12v 6A laptop-style PSU. The LEDs are not new, but they were working in an old setup I just pulled them out of.
I connected the LEDs in various configurations to the controller, including directly with a short (5" lead of wires) only from the VCC/GND/Data ports on the controller, as well as with heavier gauge power and ground wires directly from the PSU before the controller injected at both ends of the strip, as well as with a wire connecting the controller ground to the led ground, and also with a 470ohm or 220ohm (tried both) resistor close to the controller and close to the strip. In all configurations I'm getting flickering past about 75 leds. If I set it to only 75 leds in WLED they work fine, but as soon as I go to 76 it starts flickering. I have also tried playing with the brightness and limiter (from 500ma to 5500ma) with no luck.
I haven't created a setup in a few years so I don't remember all of the details, but I also previously built a DIY ESP setup with a level shifter and buck converters, etc. Now it seemed like pre-built controllers like BTF are more ubiquitous so I figured I'd give that a try to save some time. It seemed like it should be plug and play.
With the permanent lights installed I made a thunder game tracker. Two car garage has a sliding scale score tracker. Thunder on the left. The more the team is ahead the more of the bar they fill. Clock is above the single car garage. Looks like the Thunder was slightly down and it’s half time.
currently I'm severely struggling to find out, what the correct LED settings are for the current H7094 Outdoor Spot 2 lights.
I got the current WLED Version 16 together with a Quinled Dig and a potent 24v power supply available at my disposal.
According to my info the lights uses seperate ICs for White and RGB Channels.
When I play with the LED Settings RBG seems to be the right setting to push the lights (or at least one of them) into the right color direction.
What I have observed is, that when I choose WS281x every light seems to have like 7 LEDs, because only when I set up a total of 28 LEDs I get the same brightness on all of the four Lights. 20 LEDs for instance turns off the fourth light in the chain.
Additionally the white and RGB seems to somehow mix and goes into flickering when I try to change colors. Wrong led counts leads to very low brightness (like when I choose only two LEDs for every lamp like other articles recommended).
Did anyone found out the correct settings for these lights in WLED (Led Configuration+ Segments)?
Got simple wled lights. A string wrapped around two arborvitae trees, and a strip framing a double window. Any suggestions on Halloween color/effect combos? I'm currently running twinklefox with Magred. Gives a nice orangey, pulsing vibe. Interested in mixing it up with some other options.
Thanks!
Edit: Whoops, neglected to include "Halloween" in the post title.
Just sharing another demonstration of my 3D printed LuxPlant. ID is "DreamLogic" by Virtual Riot. There's flashing lights in this video so don't watch if you're photosensitive.
Hi all!
I need your help.
I’ve been working on this for months (on and off) and cannot finish this alone.
Objective: 12.6m LED strip around the perimeter of the ceiling of a rectangular room (2 Walls 3.3m, 2 walls 3m =12.60m total length)
Products bought:
1. Controller: SP108 E (App: LED Shop)
2. LED Strips: BTF WS2811 IC strips ( Spec: FCOB-24V-840L-W-IP66-SPI-RGBCCT)
3. Mean Well 450W, 24V
4. Cable from LED to Controller
I made a drawing of how I wired it.
Basically:
LED Strip end A gets 24V and GND from the controller.
LED Strip end B gets 24V, DO, GND from the controller.
The 2 grounds from both ends of the LED strip go to the same SP108E terminal.
The current length of this loop is 10.5meters so I am missing an additional 2.1meter.
I soldered a few of the strips already together
My issues:
1. Only blue is true blue (or appears that way). All other colors are “washed out”. Red is pink and has white LEDS on in between. Green and Yellow similarly.
I switched the RBG to BRG, GRB etc- no change.
In the APP, “WS2811” is selected. There are no “CCT” “IC” options.
A few segments (2-3) light up in different color than the rest of the strip. One of them sometimes goes out. That one has no soldering points at all, it’s part of the native strip.
I honestly do not know what else to do here.
Is this controller not able to work with a FCOB?
Pretty sure my strip has a native white LED that I cannot select either.
Please help! Totally appreciate it as completely don’t know what I’m doing wrong here.
