12 ms·

WLED Project

232 points by tambourine_man 4y ago

ct0 4y ago
WLED got me back into programming micro-controller and soldering. Tons of fun to be had at a relatively low cost of entry.
eamonnsullivan 4y ago
Not sure why this is being promoted today (new release?), but I absolutely love this project. I use esp32 boards to power two strips in the house and another is currently powering my Christmas lights outside. The integration with Home Assistant is awesome. I just this week made the outside lights do a little dance (turn different colours and wave) when the doorbell rings.
- MegaDeKay 4y ago
  Probably because of the release of 0.14 beta1. Here is the announcement from their Discord posted yesterday by Aircookie ~~~ After a way too long time, I am thrilled to finally share the new official beta, 0.14.0-b1, with you, just in time for Christmas! https://install.wled.me/ https://install.wled.me/ Don't let yourself be fooled by the beta moniker, this version offers so much more than 0.13 0.14 is such a huge step forward in comparison to 0.13 that there are way too many epic new features and improvements to even start listing here. The two most major additions are native support for 2D matrix panels and effects as well as audio reactivity via usermod! A huge thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who contributed to the project in the last year, especially @blazoncek , @softhack007 , @ewowi and the WLED-SR fork team, who together have contributed, if I had to approximate, 90% of the new 0.14 code!
- nevi-me 4y ago
  I've been building a project from scratch. Creating closet lights using an ESP32 and W2812B strips. I'm mostly getting myself accustomed to Matter, as I'm more building something that I'll integrate with Google Home. It's great that this is on HN, I otherwise wouldn't have known about it. Looks like it can take care of the lighting control, and then I can worry about exposing a Rainmaker interface.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Because same people let lights decorations for the last days before Xmas. And the Google search thing might have led them that path. Not that I’d know who said people are.
Marioheld 4y ago
I really love this project. Very active developrer/ community and many new features over the years. Also a very helpfull documentation.
brk 4y ago
Been using WLED for a few years now, it's really a great project. You can take the default build, flash it to an ESP device and get started directly, or integrate it easily into other automation systems and devices easily. The amount of both features and general professionalism in the interface is really incredible for an ESP-based project.
ensignavenger 4y ago
I recently started looking for something really close to this, and found this project.... but what I really want is a PoE controller, because my LEDs need power anyway, so why not control them with the same cable? Unfortunately I haven't found a WLED compatible PoE controller. Anyone know of such a thing?
- sowbug 4y ago
  I use PoE adapters that have micro USB power-out plugs. The thing being powered uses either Ethernet or WiFi, depending on what it is.
- brk 4y ago
  There are a relatively limited number of PoE ESP32 options. The Olimax unit seems to be workable with WS2812 style strips, possibly with a little bit of hacking.
- MegaDeKay 4y ago
  In case you weren't aware, a long LED strip with a high density of LEDs/m starts chewing up a lot of amps in a hurry depending on the effect. So much so that a lot of people will inject power into either end of the strip or even at multiple points along a length of interconnected strips. Otherwise the current draw causes a voltage drop that dims the LEDs and / or affects their color at the far end. Lots of WLED people (myself included) run with pretty beefy dedicated 5V supplies and use decently heavy gauge wire to connect to the strips. I'd recommend going the other way around. Connect to the ESP wirelessly and use a beefy dedicated supply to power both it and the LEDs.
  - ensignavenger 4y ago
    Thank you, I was aware of this for longer strips. My first project I want to do is my kitchen cabinets, using shorter length led strips. I have 8 cat6 cables running to my kitchen cabinets now for this project, which should be plenty of power for the short runs of LED strips I will be using. A larger under the roof eaves display would be pretty cool though- will have to carefully look at the power for that if I ever do it.
dark-star 4y ago
Funny, just 2 days ago I ordered two RGB LED strips and a power supply to play around with during the holidays. I will definitely check this out, seems to save me some programming :-)
mmmmax 4y ago
This is an amazing project and if you like WLED you’ll also like Pixelblaze which is full-stack including a coding interface: https://electromage.com/pixelblaze https://electromage.com/pixelblaze
- vosper 4y ago
  If I wanted to make a programmable LED grid in the least DIY way possible (I know nothing about electronics), would Pixelblaze be a good option?
  - bombledmonk 4y ago
    I think the short answer to your question is yes. You still have to be able to hook up few wires and you'll need to be able to power your LEDs and understand your power needs there, but the live compilation in web based development platform (that's served by the device, no cloud) makes it really ideal for rapid prototyping and getting up and running quickly. No fussing with Arduino IDE or compile times. It's one of those things that "just works". If you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMKltz8ji0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMKltz8ji0k
  - hackmiester 4y ago
    Yes.
- jonwest 4y ago
  I wish there was a way to flash this to existing hardware. I’ve already got my LEDs running on ESP32s and I’d love to play with it, but I don’t want to have to wait for/pay for international shipping for essentially the same hardware. Seems like a super cool project though! The effects look really cool and more “organic” than the WLED effects (to me at least), but I think I’ll just need to live vicariously through YouTubers on this one haha
- jerich 4y ago
  I keep intending to reinvent my own controller with an RP2040, but life gets in the way, so for the second year in a row, I’m using a Pixelblaze to control the 950 LEDs on my Christmas tree. It’s a continuous string (well, 19 strands of 50 lights connected), put on the tree in a zigzag pattern and manually mapped to a vaguely triangular 2-D shape. The patterns are mostly as downloaded from the Pixelblaze repository. I’d highly recommend Pixelblaze for getting a fairly complex setup working quickly. https://youtu.be/hu-RQx_NpAY https://youtu.be/hu-RQx_NpAY
poutine 4y ago
I've been toying a lot with this recently. A tip for anyone that's interested, you can order a compatible LED strip from Ali Express for much cheaper than Amazon, though you're going to wait several weeks. For example, do a search for WS2815 LED Strips and compare. BTW, if you're doing just single color check out COB LED strips, they're pretty cool with the uniform lighting over the strip. Get them in 24v to avoid voltage drop. LED Strips are lots of fun to play with and pretty easy to chop up, power and control.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Or look at the SK6812 LED strips. You'll get RGBW, which is perfect for cool looking task lighting
  - zxcvbn4038 4y ago
    I was just looking at these today - there are three variants with different degrees of white, so might need to check which you are ordering. If they are going to be outside you probably need the IP65 or IP67 rated variants. If you look around on aliexpress you can find both black and white colored strips. I got started down the rabbit hole when I saw ads for permanent light fixtures for housing. The idea is you install the lights once and then you can use the color changing ability to create appropriate displays for different holidays throughout the year.
    - Jarwain 4y ago
      I got RGBCCT lights that give me a bunch of control over the white temperature, they're quite nice!
codeslave13 4y ago
Anyone recommend a “beginners starter kit” to start exploring wled stuff? Ie. A board, pa, and smallish or various strip options? Thanks
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  Personally a fan of Adafruit's Feather boards, their ESP32 Feather can probably use the WLED code as-is, and there's expansions that include all the LEDs already soldered https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945
  - spdustin 4y ago
    Can confirm that Huzzah32 runs WLED just fine. Really convenient to have that LiPo battery connector and charging circuit built in, too.
- poutine 4y ago
  Check out the Athom box, available on Ali Express: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003776848515.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.59766d43BF5mzA https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003776848515.html?spm=a2... It's an all in one with WLED on it. You just need a strip, some wire and a power supply.
  - antsar 4y ago
    Also available from their site with much faster shipping than AliExpress’s Jan 20 (to the US, at least). https://www.athom.tech/ https://www.athom.tech/ Happily using this little guy to drive 100 fairy lights (from Adafruit), all from a USB plug. https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-2812b-led-strip-controller https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-2812b-led-strip-controll...
- jsjohnst 4y ago
  check out the boards made by Quindor. Very solid, very affordable. https://quinled.info https://quinled.info His videos and blog posts are super helpful too!
blockarchitech 4y ago
Time to blow up a nodemcu. Or two.
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
Any one new to LEDs and trying to learn some basics, Here's 'Secret life of components' by Tim Hunkin[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvcITqw5iDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvcITqw5iDY
hexo 4y ago
Very nice, I have some questions tho - did esp got better than it used to be? I mean - all esp devices i've used had MTBF between 1-2 weeks. And what about zigbee 3.0 - how does it compare to this (from all points of view)?
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  That definitely doesn't line up with what I've seen, failurewise. One of my ESP-32s has been running pretty much continuously for 3 years without any trouble. And in the past I've had no trouble running multiple for months at a time. The only failures I've had, across maybe 4 different manufacturers, happened when I did something dumb and unintentionally fried a board.
  - hexo 4y ago
    Thanks for a good news!
- hackmiester 4y ago
  Are you maybe overvolting your ESPs? I've had an ESP8266 outdoors (shielded from rain, poorly) for 4 years with no apparent issue. Running one WLED device is much simpler than Zigbee. If you run more than one, they use UDP to sync over your Wi-Fi. If you have decent Wi-Fi, this will be much easier to set up than Zigbee; if we are talking a more industrial installation, it may not be a good fit.
  - hexo 4y ago
    I dunno if it was overvolted, all were done by someone else. And just realized it was eps8266, not esp32. Also timeline-wise it was about 5 years ago. ad zigbee - I already have some devices and I strictly wanted to have a complete different network for these. wifi is not an option (for me, at this moment). Just looked up their website, they make an esp32-c6 (risc-v core, wifi+bt+zb), and esp32-h2 (the same but has no wifi).
- theshrike79 4y ago
  ESP boards are Wifi, Zigbee is a completely different protocol with encryption and mesh capabilities and all that.
jsjohnst 4y ago
If you really want to get serious with WLED, check out the new Quinled-Dig-Octa boards. Super affordable and hands down the easiest way to get thousands of lights setup. 50-100A of LEDs, no problem! You’ll spend more on the power supply than you will on Quindor’s top notch boards. https://quinled.info https://quinled.info (Not affiliated in any way except being a very happy customer)
- khimaros 4y ago
  +1000, we built a large scale art installation using Quinn's DigQuad. they were easily the single most significant and prudent technical decision made for our project. amazing community, documentation, and high quality product.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Any chance of a link or photo or something?
  - whatusername 4y ago
    I'm curious -- why something small like a DigQuad and not something beefier like a Falcon/Kulp? (I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "large scale" -- but WLED/ESP32 doesn't really tick the large box for me)
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      > 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”.
      - whatusername 4y ago
        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?
Waterluvian 4y ago
I got this neopixel ring in a kit and as a non-hardware person it perplexes me how I’m supposed to use it. There’s no mount points. Is the expectation that everyone can design and print parts? I can wire it up and program it but goodness knows how I actually affix it to my Pololu Romi.
- sen 4y ago
  Depending on the placement you’re after you can quite literally hot glue it, or use 3M command tape, or fabricate a little bracket/housing using hobbyist plastics or wood. Hot glue is probably the most common method since if done tidily it’s a strong hold but can be cleanly removed if required.
khimaros 4y ago
WLED can also be paired with OpenRGB to control many discrete devices over the network via E1.31. there is also an open source spatial napping plugin for OpenRGB which can be paired with an effects plugin supporting GLSL shaders and even GIF or video feeds. with this combination you can approach the capabilities of proprietary systems which cost easily 20x.
RoddyRags 4y ago
Made a mega comet across our living room window with 2x esp32 and 2x 300 RGBW strips. One in a star 5 points 10 segments. The other strip as a 2 pronged tail on the comet (2 segments) which becomes more wiggly (turbulent) with distance. This project totally made my Christmas I could spend ages playing with the settings and mixing the right colours & speeds... Setting the 2 to sync with each other or do their own thing is sooo easy, even my mother in law enjoyed controlling it. Even a wee 24 rgb LED ring can have cool effects with this superb software
- jve 4y ago
  Care to share video?
dang 4y ago
Related: WLED Arduino WiFi LED Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29970819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29970819 - Jan 2022 (20 comments)
spdustin 4y ago
I used WLED to make an RGB LED effect-laden scarf for my wife, and then decided to add the same setup to a Santa hat. Now, as long as one ESP32 can access the other (either over the built-in access point or any shared WiFi network) the effects she chooses on her scarf sync to the brim of my Santa hat :) I love WLED so hard.
- patrick91 4y ago
  do you have pictures or a write up about this? sounds very neat!
- bschwindHN 4y ago
  If the ESP32 chips will always be close to each other, you can use ESP-NOW to have them talk to each other without the need for an access point or wifi network.
MauranKilom 4y ago
I have a long term project of room lighting that reacts to music. I've gotten my feet wet working with the LED strips already, but hadn't heard of WLED - sounds extremely promising! Does somebody have an idea whether "real-time" music <-> light sync is feasible with WLED? I plan to have the audio processing happening outside the ESP32, but then I'm still concerned about the bandwidth requirements (driving ~300 NeoPixels), because ideally I don't want to just trigger "discrete" effects but retain full control. I just wonder whether WLED puts any significant overhead in there that I wouldn't run into with something hand-rolled...
- whatusername 4y ago
  WLED has sound reactive plugins for built-in effects. Looks like there's some new stuff in .14 for this as well -- but I haven't followed closely. Or if you wanted to externalise it completely - it supports DDP/E1.31 -- you could generate the required effect externally - and just send the commands over the network. That should do 40 updates per second for 300 pixels. Ideally send it over ethernet - but you could probably pull it off over a good wifi network.
  - MauranKilom 4y ago
    Thanks for the pointers! After digging a bit more, I found https://github.com/scottlawsonbc/audio-reactive-led-strip https://github.com/scottlawsonbc/audio-reactive-led-strip which looks like an excellent end-to-end setup that's also easy to explore further from. Can't wait to sink lots of hours into it :D
    - fieryskiff11 4y ago
      [dead]
- sowbug 4y ago
  Have a look at https://www.tindie.com/products/lixielabs/sensory-bridge-an-advanced-led-music-visualizer/ https://www.tindie.com/products/lixielabs/sensory-bridge-an-..., which uses the ESP32-S2, but not WLED as far as I know. I'm a happy customer.
birdman3131 4y ago
So I had a stack of 12v pixel leds I picked up at an amazon returns bin store a while back for $10 for 10 sets of 50 leds. (Normally $120-150) This was 6 strings (Only 5 visible), a D1 esp 8266 running wled and a 12v power supply. Worked quite well. https://imgur.com/a/C8BbDVI https://imgur.com/a/C8BbDVI
agys 4y ago
Recently we built a LED sign for a bar named “Cinque a Zero” like a Campari based cocktail. We used a single Teensy 4.1 + a simple custom board that we designed to drive around 10K RGBW LEDs. Twitter thread with some background: https://twitter.com/andreasgysin/status/1472943758467645450?s=20&t=75xZ8EmhD9czq8Kwd3t0bw https://twitter.com/andreasgysin/status/1472943758467645450?...
- sen 4y ago
  That’s such an incredible end result. I’ve done dozens of WLED projects now for myself and clients, and it never ceases to amaze me the cool stuff people come up with.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
The 0.14 beta just released which adds support for 2d matrixes. Great bit of software for easily controlling RGB strips.
iamflimflam1 4y ago
Since it’s Christmas I feel I should post my old addressable LEDs project. https://youtu.be/Ic_MmhiT8qE https://youtu.be/Ic_MmhiT8qE
Whitespace 4y ago
If you're going down the rabbit hole of addressable LEDs, a great resource is this community-maintained spreadsheet that has a lot of addressable LED info on it called "Addressable LED Controllers, Drivers, and Related Products & Projects" https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10pHG7_VIVltyqJK1Y0T5g3Iq6YJV2MnhMp3UcAVB-GA/edit#gid=755169190 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10pHG7_VIVltyqJK1Y0T5...
userbinator 4y ago
Unfortunately "WLED" is already a term-of-art in the industry, and stands for "white LED", so I can see this causing a lot of confusion in the future. Random example: https://www.analog.com/en/products/max17105.html https://www.analog.com/en/products/max17105.html

ct0 4y ago

WLED got me back into programming micro-controller and soldering. Tons of fun to be had at a relatively low cost of entry.

eamonnsullivan 4y ago

Not sure why this is being promoted today (new release?), but I absolutely love this project. I use esp32 boards to power two strips in the house and another is currently powering my Christmas lights outside. The integration with Home Assistant is awesome. I just this week made the outside lights do a little dance (turn different colours and wave) when the doorbell rings.

MegaDeKay 4y ago
Probably because of the release of 0.14 beta1. Here is the announcement from their Discord posted yesterday by Aircookie ~~~ After a way too long time, I am thrilled to finally share the new official beta, 0.14.0-b1, with you, just in time for Christmas! https://install.wled.me/ https://install.wled.me/ Don't let yourself be fooled by the beta moniker, this version offers so much more than 0.13 0.14 is such a huge step forward in comparison to 0.13 that there are way too many epic new features and improvements to even start listing here. The two most major additions are native support for 2D matrix panels and effects as well as audio reactivity via usermod! A huge thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who contributed to the project in the last year, especially @blazoncek , @softhack007 , @ewowi and the WLED-SR fork team, who together have contributed, if I had to approximate, 90% of the new 0.14 code!
nevi-me 4y ago
I've been building a project from scratch. Creating closet lights using an ESP32 and W2812B strips. I'm mostly getting myself accustomed to Matter, as I'm more building something that I'll integrate with Google Home. It's great that this is on HN, I otherwise wouldn't have known about it. Looks like it can take care of the lighting control, and then I can worry about exposing a Rainmaker interface.
tambourine_man 4y ago
Because same people let lights decorations for the last days before Xmas. And the Google search thing might have led them that path. Not that I’d know who said people are.

Marioheld 4y ago

I really love this project. Very active developrer/ community and many new features over the years. Also a very helpfull documentation.

brk 4y ago

Been using WLED for a few years now, it's really a great project. You can take the default build, flash it to an ESP device and get started directly, or integrate it easily into other automation systems and devices easily. The amount of both features and general professionalism in the interface is really incredible for an ESP-based project.

ensignavenger 4y ago

I recently started looking for something really close to this, and found this project.... but what I really want is a PoE controller, because my LEDs need power anyway, so why not control them with the same cable? Unfortunately I haven't found a WLED compatible PoE controller. Anyone know of such a thing?

sowbug 4y ago
I use PoE adapters that have micro USB power-out plugs. The thing being powered uses either Ethernet or WiFi, depending on what it is.
brk 4y ago
There are a relatively limited number of PoE ESP32 options. The Olimax unit seems to be workable with WS2812 style strips, possibly with a little bit of hacking.
MegaDeKay 4y ago
In case you weren't aware, a long LED strip with a high density of LEDs/m starts chewing up a lot of amps in a hurry depending on the effect. So much so that a lot of people will inject power into either end of the strip or even at multiple points along a length of interconnected strips. Otherwise the current draw causes a voltage drop that dims the LEDs and / or affects their color at the far end. Lots of WLED people (myself included) run with pretty beefy dedicated 5V supplies and use decently heavy gauge wire to connect to the strips. I'd recommend going the other way around. Connect to the ESP wirelessly and use a beefy dedicated supply to power both it and the LEDs.
- ensignavenger 4y ago
  Thank you, I was aware of this for longer strips. My first project I want to do is my kitchen cabinets, using shorter length led strips. I have 8 cat6 cables running to my kitchen cabinets now for this project, which should be plenty of power for the short runs of LED strips I will be using. A larger under the roof eaves display would be pretty cool though- will have to carefully look at the power for that if I ever do it.

dark-star 4y ago

Funny, just 2 days ago I ordered two RGB LED strips and a power supply to play around with during the holidays. I will definitely check this out, seems to save me some programming :-)

mmmmax 4y ago

This is an amazing project and if you like WLED you’ll also like Pixelblaze which is full-stack including a coding interface: https://electromage.com/pixelblaze https://electromage.com/pixelblaze

vosper 4y ago
If I wanted to make a programmable LED grid in the least DIY way possible (I know nothing about electronics), would Pixelblaze be a good option?
- bombledmonk 4y ago
  I think the short answer to your question is yes. You still have to be able to hook up few wires and you'll need to be able to power your LEDs and understand your power needs there, but the live compilation in web based development platform (that's served by the device, no cloud) makes it really ideal for rapid prototyping and getting up and running quickly. No fussing with Arduino IDE or compile times. It's one of those things that "just works". If you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMKltz8ji0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMKltz8ji0k
- hackmiester 4y ago
  Yes.
jonwest 4y ago
I wish there was a way to flash this to existing hardware. I’ve already got my LEDs running on ESP32s and I’d love to play with it, but I don’t want to have to wait for/pay for international shipping for essentially the same hardware. Seems like a super cool project though! The effects look really cool and more “organic” than the WLED effects (to me at least), but I think I’ll just need to live vicariously through YouTubers on this one haha
jerich 4y ago
I keep intending to reinvent my own controller with an RP2040, but life gets in the way, so for the second year in a row, I’m using a Pixelblaze to control the 950 LEDs on my Christmas tree. It’s a continuous string (well, 19 strands of 50 lights connected), put on the tree in a zigzag pattern and manually mapped to a vaguely triangular 2-D shape. The patterns are mostly as downloaded from the Pixelblaze repository. I’d highly recommend Pixelblaze for getting a fairly complex setup working quickly. https://youtu.be/hu-RQx_NpAY https://youtu.be/hu-RQx_NpAY

poutine 4y ago

I've been toying a lot with this recently. A tip for anyone that's interested, you can order a compatible LED strip from Ali Express for much cheaper than Amazon, though you're going to wait several weeks. For example, do a search for WS2815 LED Strips and compare. BTW, if you're doing just single color check out COB LED strips, they're pretty cool with the uniform lighting over the strip. Get them in 24v to avoid voltage drop. LED Strips are lots of fun to play with and pretty easy to chop up, power and control.

spookthesunset 4y ago
Or look at the SK6812 LED strips. You'll get RGBW, which is perfect for cool looking task lighting
- zxcvbn4038 4y ago
  I was just looking at these today - there are three variants with different degrees of white, so might need to check which you are ordering. If they are going to be outside you probably need the IP65 or IP67 rated variants. If you look around on aliexpress you can find both black and white colored strips. I got started down the rabbit hole when I saw ads for permanent light fixtures for housing. The idea is you install the lights once and then you can use the color changing ability to create appropriate displays for different holidays throughout the year.
  - Jarwain 4y ago
    I got RGBCCT lights that give me a bunch of control over the white temperature, they're quite nice!

codeslave13 4y ago

Anyone recommend a “beginners starter kit” to start exploring wled stuff? Ie. A board, pa, and smallish or various strip options? Thanks

jareklupinski 4y ago
Personally a fan of Adafruit's Feather boards, their ESP32 Feather can probably use the WLED code as-is, and there's expansions that include all the LEDs already soldered https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945
- spdustin 4y ago
  Can confirm that Huzzah32 runs WLED just fine. Really convenient to have that LiPo battery connector and charging circuit built in, too.
poutine 4y ago
Check out the Athom box, available on Ali Express: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003776848515.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.59766d43BF5mzA https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003776848515.html?spm=a2... It's an all in one with WLED on it. You just need a strip, some wire and a power supply.
- antsar 4y ago
  Also available from their site with much faster shipping than AliExpress’s Jan 20 (to the US, at least). https://www.athom.tech/ https://www.athom.tech/ Happily using this little guy to drive 100 fairy lights (from Adafruit), all from a USB plug. https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-2812b-led-strip-controller https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-2812b-led-strip-controll...
jsjohnst 4y ago
check out the boards made by Quindor. Very solid, very affordable. https://quinled.info https://quinled.info His videos and blog posts are super helpful too!

blockarchitech 4y ago

Time to blow up a nodemcu. Or two.

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

Any one new to LEDs and trying to learn some basics, Here's 'Secret life of components' by Tim Hunkin[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvcITqw5iDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvcITqw5iDY

hexo 4y ago

Very nice, I have some questions tho - did esp got better than it used to be? I mean - all esp devices i've used had MTBF between 1-2 weeks. And what about zigbee 3.0 - how does it compare to this (from all points of view)?

Rebelgecko 4y ago
That definitely doesn't line up with what I've seen, failurewise. One of my ESP-32s has been running pretty much continuously for 3 years without any trouble. And in the past I've had no trouble running multiple for months at a time. The only failures I've had, across maybe 4 different manufacturers, happened when I did something dumb and unintentionally fried a board.
- hexo 4y ago
  Thanks for a good news!
hackmiester 4y ago
Are you maybe overvolting your ESPs? I've had an ESP8266 outdoors (shielded from rain, poorly) for 4 years with no apparent issue. Running one WLED device is much simpler than Zigbee. If you run more than one, they use UDP to sync over your Wi-Fi. If you have decent Wi-Fi, this will be much easier to set up than Zigbee; if we are talking a more industrial installation, it may not be a good fit.
- hexo 4y ago
  I dunno if it was overvolted, all were done by someone else. And just realized it was eps8266, not esp32. Also timeline-wise it was about 5 years ago. ad zigbee - I already have some devices and I strictly wanted to have a complete different network for these. wifi is not an option (for me, at this moment). Just looked up their website, they make an esp32-c6 (risc-v core, wifi+bt+zb), and esp32-h2 (the same but has no wifi).
theshrike79 4y ago
ESP boards are Wifi, Zigbee is a completely different protocol with encryption and mesh capabilities and all that.

jsjohnst 4y ago

If you really want to get serious with WLED, check out the new Quinled-Dig-Octa boards. Super affordable and hands down the easiest way to get thousands of lights setup. 50-100A of LEDs, no problem! You’ll spend more on the power supply than you will on Quindor’s top notch boards. https://quinled.info https://quinled.info (Not affiliated in any way except being a very happy customer)

khimaros 4y ago
+1000, we built a large scale art installation using Quinn's DigQuad. they were easily the single most significant and prudent technical decision made for our project. amazing community, documentation, and high quality product.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Any chance of a link or photo or something?
- whatusername 4y ago
  I'm curious -- why something small like a DigQuad and not something beefier like a Falcon/Kulp? (I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "large scale" -- but WLED/ESP32 doesn't really tick the large box for me)
  - jsjohnst 4y ago
    > 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”.
    - whatusername 4y ago
      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?

Waterluvian 4y ago

I got this neopixel ring in a kit and as a non-hardware person it perplexes me how I’m supposed to use it. There’s no mount points. Is the expectation that everyone can design and print parts? I can wire it up and program it but goodness knows how I actually affix it to my Pololu Romi.

sen 4y ago
Depending on the placement you’re after you can quite literally hot glue it, or use 3M command tape, or fabricate a little bracket/housing using hobbyist plastics or wood. Hot glue is probably the most common method since if done tidily it’s a strong hold but can be cleanly removed if required.

khimaros 4y ago

WLED can also be paired with OpenRGB to control many discrete devices over the network via E1.31. there is also an open source spatial napping plugin for OpenRGB which can be paired with an effects plugin supporting GLSL shaders and even GIF or video feeds. with this combination you can approach the capabilities of proprietary systems which cost easily 20x.

RoddyRags 4y ago

Made a mega comet across our living room window with 2x esp32 and 2x 300 RGBW strips. One in a star 5 points 10 segments. The other strip as a 2 pronged tail on the comet (2 segments) which becomes more wiggly (turbulent) with distance. This project totally made my Christmas I could spend ages playing with the settings and mixing the right colours & speeds... Setting the 2 to sync with each other or do their own thing is sooo easy, even my mother in law enjoyed controlling it. Even a wee 24 rgb LED ring can have cool effects with this superb software

jve 4y ago
Care to share video?

dang 4y ago

Related: WLED Arduino WiFi LED Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29970819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29970819 - Jan 2022 (20 comments)

spdustin 4y ago

I used WLED to make an RGB LED effect-laden scarf for my wife, and then decided to add the same setup to a Santa hat. Now, as long as one ESP32 can access the other (either over the built-in access point or any shared WiFi network) the effects she chooses on her scarf sync to the brim of my Santa hat :) I love WLED so hard.

patrick91 4y ago
do you have pictures or a write up about this? sounds very neat!
bschwindHN 4y ago
If the ESP32 chips will always be close to each other, you can use ESP-NOW to have them talk to each other without the need for an access point or wifi network.

MauranKilom 4y ago

I have a long term project of room lighting that reacts to music. I've gotten my feet wet working with the LED strips already, but hadn't heard of WLED - sounds extremely promising! Does somebody have an idea whether "real-time" music <-> light sync is feasible with WLED? I plan to have the audio processing happening outside the ESP32, but then I'm still concerned about the bandwidth requirements (driving ~300 NeoPixels), because ideally I don't want to just trigger "discrete" effects but retain full control. I just wonder whether WLED puts any significant overhead in there that I wouldn't run into with something hand-rolled...

whatusername 4y ago
WLED has sound reactive plugins for built-in effects. Looks like there's some new stuff in .14 for this as well -- but I haven't followed closely. Or if you wanted to externalise it completely - it supports DDP/E1.31 -- you could generate the required effect externally - and just send the commands over the network. That should do 40 updates per second for 300 pixels. Ideally send it over ethernet - but you could probably pull it off over a good wifi network.
- MauranKilom 4y ago
  Thanks for the pointers! After digging a bit more, I found https://github.com/scottlawsonbc/audio-reactive-led-strip https://github.com/scottlawsonbc/audio-reactive-led-strip which looks like an excellent end-to-end setup that's also easy to explore further from. Can't wait to sink lots of hours into it :D
  - fieryskiff11 4y ago
    [dead]
sowbug 4y ago
Have a look at https://www.tindie.com/products/lixielabs/sensory-bridge-an-advanced-led-music-visualizer/ https://www.tindie.com/products/lixielabs/sensory-bridge-an-..., which uses the ESP32-S2, but not WLED as far as I know. I'm a happy customer.

birdman3131 4y ago

So I had a stack of 12v pixel leds I picked up at an amazon returns bin store a while back for $10 for 10 sets of 50 leds. (Normally $120-150) This was 6 strings (Only 5 visible), a D1 esp 8266 running wled and a 12v power supply. Worked quite well. https://imgur.com/a/C8BbDVI https://imgur.com/a/C8BbDVI

agys 4y ago

Recently we built a LED sign for a bar named “Cinque a Zero” like a Campari based cocktail. We used a single Teensy 4.1 + a simple custom board that we designed to drive around 10K RGBW LEDs. Twitter thread with some background: https://twitter.com/andreasgysin/status/1472943758467645450?s=20&t=75xZ8EmhD9czq8Kwd3t0bw https://twitter.com/andreasgysin/status/1472943758467645450?...

sen 4y ago
That’s such an incredible end result. I’ve done dozens of WLED projects now for myself and clients, and it never ceases to amaze me the cool stuff people come up with.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

The 0.14 beta just released which adds support for 2d matrixes. Great bit of software for easily controlling RGB strips.

iamflimflam1 4y ago

Since it’s Christmas I feel I should post my old addressable LEDs project. https://youtu.be/Ic_MmhiT8qE https://youtu.be/Ic_MmhiT8qE

Whitespace 4y ago

If you're going down the rabbit hole of addressable LEDs, a great resource is this community-maintained spreadsheet that has a lot of addressable LED info on it called "Addressable LED Controllers, Drivers, and Related Products & Projects" https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10pHG7_VIVltyqJK1Y0T5g3Iq6YJV2MnhMp3UcAVB-GA/edit#gid=755169190 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10pHG7_VIVltyqJK1Y0T5...

userbinator 4y ago

Unfortunately "WLED" is already a term-of-art in the industry, and stands for "white LED", so I can see this causing a lot of confusion in the future. Random example: https://www.analog.com/en/products/max17105.html https://www.analog.com/en/products/max17105.html