Addressable LEDs for Xmas. Noob Project !

[TimG]

Nearly 7,000 views, so people are interested in lights !
I now have all of the LEDs. WLED does a fabulous light show with a linear string of addressable LEDs, but makes a phenomenal light show with a 2D matrix.
I've got the SYNC fully working between ESP32's, and have been creating Playlists. I made a "Tim Snow 1" preset, and have added various WLED functions between snow in the Playlist so that it can play for hours.
I had tried MQTT control from Homeseer, but that made the ESP32's stutter during sequences, so back to basic Sync rather than full automated control. Ho hum, the perils of modern life.
This weekend I will be fixing the LED strings to the upstairs windows, where I have just completed adding strings of pre-tensioned vertical beads to tie them to.
Looking good for December

[TimG]

17,000 views for a non BI topic
And my lights are ready. I've battled weird sync issues and dodgy wifi with the ESP32's that turned out to be a setting on my non standard ASUS mesh wifi called "airtime fairness". It works very well now. Just need to decide what to do with these spare LED strings. Must...resist...

Oh, and these LED strings are supposed to be 100 LEDs long. Some turned out to be 99, so no 10x10 matrices there and others had failing LEDs that stopped a string midway. The good news is that they are not "fixed address", so I can get the wire cutters and chop and join them as I want. All working now, and the seller is sending spares too. Since my matrices are normally 12x8 =96 LEDs, all is well.

[IAmATeaf]

Thread is useless without pics

[TimG]

Ho Ho Ho

[TimG]

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. We have snow in the UK

This has come a long way since that first post, where I was noodling the possibilities. Lights are still a work in progress, but as an Engineer they always will be. I can tell you that these have already received 20/10 WAF from wifey

This is the front door from inside which has a 19 high x 5 wide 2D matrix running my Snow effect. This is controlled from an ESP32 running WLED in Sync/slave to the upstairs controller.

The upstairs windows were all slightly different sizes and heights, so I had to choose a horizontal path to fit them all. Since the LEDs are 10cm apart, and I have an 80cm high horizontal path, they each have a 8 high x 12 wide matrix, which combines to create a 8 high x 48 wide matrix which is controlled by a QuinLED Dig-Uno running WLED as Sync/master (Chosen as it has excellent power connections/ fusing and two data outputs).

Screenshot 2023-12-09 191153.png (26.83 KiB) Viewed 88637 times

The mobile phone camera seems to be making these images look murky, but they look great from here:

This is the Snow effect on all windows.

And this is the Scrolling text effect.

And a quick video of a beautiful rotating effect called Black Hole.

So as you can see, Govee curtains wouldn't fit, and so I had to make my own to fit very specific sizes. The swirly WLED matrix effects like "Black Hole" are fantastic. I have just created a Youtube account to upload videos to, so I will add more when I get the bugs ironed out.

FYI: The LEDs I have used are these from Ebay:

The LEDs.png (238.6 KiB) Viewed 89374 times

For the future ? It's a bit like cameras really. I need more LEDs

[TimG]

25 x 8 matrix ? I'll be right back

Edit: Sorted.

[TimG]

OK, it's stopped raining in the UK for 5 minutes, so I popped outside to get a few video clips. I note again that these lights are really clear to the naked eye, but the phone camera makes their light too bright and mucks up the colours:

This is one of the matrix effects, showing swirly lines going around all four upstairs windows.

This is another matrix effect, showing a DNA helix going across the windows.

And a few more normal effects:

Coloured bars with sparkles.

More colours.

More swirly colours.

Beautiful swirly colours.

They are absolutely stunning, and the camera really doesn't show what My eyes can see. Well worth the effort.

So, this is:

1. A Dig-Uno running WLED as Master for the four upstairs windows. It has good power management including a fuse. 48 x 8 matrix.
2. An ESP32 running WLED as Slave for the downstairs window. 5 x 19 matrix.
3. Another ESP32 in the kitchen running WLED as Slave with a 1D string.
4. Yet another ESP32 in a rear bedroom running WLED as Slave. 10 x 10 matrix.
5. And guess what. Another ESP32 running WLED as Slave. Now this one I have plugged in to a 10,000mAh power bank with another 100 LED string. After running for 5 hours it had used 1/4 of the power, so that one is going in my car for Xmas. It will sync to the Master WLED too, as all of these devices are on my wifi.

Right, better stop all of this frivolity, as I need to round the reindeer up ready for the big day

[TimG]

The good news is that these are stunningly beautiful when they work. The bad news is that the Chinese quality control for the LEDs is not good. These LEDs have been connected every 10cm down a three core cable (5v, data 0v), and work such that the controller sends out a command which is received by the first LED. It reads it's alloted command and sends the rest of the command to LED 2 and onwards to the end. If the data wire disconnects on a LED, you will see a pattern going down the wire and stopping there. If you squeeze the first failed LED the remaining string bursts into life. For a while. Bad connection.
I have too many of these failing so cannot recommend these particular LEDs.
WLED software and the control equipment is excellent.

[IAmATeaf]

Looks good.

Must be a dry solder joint? Get yourself a 25watt soldering iron and some leaded solder and get soldering

[TimG]

These are tiny LEDs covered in what looks like epoxy. I will be having a scrape at one in a while to see if I can get at the tiny wires. And yes, I'm old enough to have leaded solder
The reason I know it's the data wire is because I connected 5v and 0v at both ends of each 100 string cable to minimise volts drop.