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I was trying to automate my BLE connected Christmas lights but instead I created e-waste. Now you can too!
by willcooke 3y ago
I was trying to automate my BLE connected Christmas lights but instead I created e-waste.
Now you can too!
- CTOSian 3y agoyou can still use them as dummy/classic lights if you bypass the controller
- willcooke 3y ago+1 I can just swap the micro controller with something like an ESP8266 and run WLED.
- green-salt 3y agoI did this super similar (ESP32) with a set I got from walmart. Works great!
- wkjagt 3y agoI find it amazing to think that your Christmas lights are now way more powerful than my first computer.
- green-salt 3y agoI think about stuff like this a lot, like what technologies I'm (ab)using to do some silly gadget thing.
- wkjagt 3y agoEven though it's way more powerful than my first computer, it uses only a fraction of the energy. So yes, in a way maybe you're abusing a pretty powerful computer to do some silly gadget thing, but there's no real negative impact. I know what you mean though. I've only recently gotten into microcontrollers, and because of the time of year I've been thinking of Christmas lights too, and felt the same thing. Then again: I'm also using my M1 Macbook to write a comment on HN, which is only a fraction of what it can do.
- green-salt 3y agoOh no negativity in the statement, I'm enjoying every second of it!
- elliottkember 3y agoIf you get into FastLED, try out the emulator I made – https://editor.soulmatelights.com/gallery/732-rainbow-conway https://editor.soulmatelights.com/gallery/732-rainbow-conway I haven't worked on it at all recently (COVID project) but it's fun for experimenting. You can also flash ESP32s from the downloadable desktop app
- organsnyder 3y agoI bought a big spool of addressable lights from Aliexpress and hooked them up to an ESP32. Took some soldering and other hacking, but they’re really, really, nice.
- sva_ 3y agoNot sure what you did with it, but I found that some of this SmartTrash does a hard reset when you do some magic sequence such as quickly turning if off/on 5 times in a row.
- ryukoposting 3y agoIf you want a more GUI-oriented way of doing BLE packet sniffing, try the nRF Connect app. Not sure about iPhone, but if you let it sit in the background on Android, you can pick up BLE activity from a nice little GUI on your phone. I use it every day.