4 ms·

Wow, I really liked this article. The entire process looked great and the explanation was rather simple.

StavrosK 11y ago
Thank you! I was afraid it didn't contain enough code, or enough interesting bits. I'm glad you like it! You can take a look at the code on Github, hopefully it'll be easy enough to understand (it's a bit ad-hoc, so I don't know how much sense it will make to others).
- roymurdock 11y ago
  I liked the use of the Expounder tool as well. Less work than jumping up and down to read footnotes, the explanations were well-written and fit into the article flow, and the animation was quick but nice. Nicely done!
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    Thank you! I hate footnotes as well, so that's part of why I made Expounder.
- jeffwass 11y ago
  Missed this in the article, but how are you actually turning on/off the lights after this controller sends a "turn on" signal? Is this basically right : You have some separate receiver that the light or other accessory plugs into, which senses the MQTT signal sent from the controller unique for its channel, and turns on its connected accessory? Were those receivers custom designed as well?
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    The lights plug in to some cheap RF-controlled plugs, and the sensor board sends the signal with the RF transmitter to turn the plugs on and off. I reverse-engineered the timings in this post: https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-raspberry-pi/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-r... Also, I designed this PCB that's basically a wifi-enabled ESP8266 LED controller: http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=16892&accesskey=996a11f93e9b6f833112ceedd77168f7 http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=16892&accesskey=996a11f9... This allows you to control 5050 LEDs and change their color/intensity/etc over MQTT. I'm going to write a thing to slowly fade them to max as night falls, and make them progressively redder as I get nearer bed time. I'm just waiting for the PCBs to arrive, the prototype works fine. You can subscribe to my blog to be notified when I write that post up as well.

Thank you! I was afraid it didn't contain enough code, or enough interesting bits. I'm glad you like it! You can take a look at the code on Github, hopefully it'll be easy enough to understand (it's a bit ad-hoc, so I don't know how much sense it will make to others).

roymurdock 11y ago
I liked the use of the Expounder tool as well. Less work than jumping up and down to read footnotes, the explanations were well-written and fit into the article flow, and the animation was quick but nice. Nicely done!
- StavrosK 11y ago
  Thank you! I hate footnotes as well, so that's part of why I made Expounder.
jeffwass 11y ago
Missed this in the article, but how are you actually turning on/off the lights after this controller sends a "turn on" signal? Is this basically right : You have some separate receiver that the light or other accessory plugs into, which senses the MQTT signal sent from the controller unique for its channel, and turns on its connected accessory? Were those receivers custom designed as well?
- StavrosK 11y ago
  The lights plug in to some cheap RF-controlled plugs, and the sensor board sends the signal with the RF transmitter to turn the plugs on and off. I reverse-engineered the timings in this post: https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-raspberry-pi/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-r... Also, I designed this PCB that's basically a wifi-enabled ESP8266 LED controller: http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=16892&accesskey=996a11f93e9b6f833112ceedd77168f7 http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=16892&accesskey=996a11f9... This allows you to control 5050 LEDs and change their color/intensity/etc over MQTT. I'm going to write a thing to slowly fade them to max as night falls, and make them progressively redder as I get nearer bed time. I'm just waiting for the PCBs to arrive, the prototype works fine. You can subscribe to my blog to be notified when I write that post up as well.