I am replacing some old outdoor lights and I want to get LED lights that I can program? Any suggestions on the best ones? Ideally replaceable/extendable light strings with some kind of programmable controller that has usb/wifi. If it has an app my family can use that’s a plus.
Many 'effects' already prepackaged. Plus the ability to schedule time based changes (on/off/change pattern/etc.). Includes a web server to provide "app like" control over a phone or PC. Also includes integrations for several "home control" systems and a http API for programmatic control from another system. Can even synchronize plural controllers into a whole 'net' (note, I've not used this feature yet).
Small ESP32 boards (with wifi capability) such as this example (no affiliation, just an example that works):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y8X1GK7
WS2811 LED strings [1] (of which there are an infinite variety) suitable for outdoor use. One example (no affiliation):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYZF1WCR
Suitable power supplies, outdoor weather sealed boxes, and wiring (all left to you to locate).
Willingness to assemble the pieces and some time to do so. Having a soldering iron is helpful here, although one could possibly get by with screw terminal blocks inside weatherproof boxes if need be for many of the 'connections'.
[1] Or other 'programmable LED' strings for which WLED is compatible (it works with numerous different programmable LED standards, browse the WLED website for details).
> kno.wled.ge
I want to take a moment to ackno.wled.ge how absolute awesome of a domain hack “kno.wled.ge” is for the website of a WLED project!
Also, since on one has mentioned it yet, the go-to LED strips are from BTF-Lighting.
I personally buy them from AliExpress since I dont care if they arrive in a week as opposed to 1-2 days from Amazon.
The missing middle appears to be tree lights that have a traditional appearance (and don’t look like robot spaghetti). Adhesive LED light strips are meant to be only indirectly visible.
These are a good stand-in: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002906547500.html
They are strip lights, but the light is mostly omnidirectional, and the strip material is flexible. If you want a dark-colored strip, which looks better on a dark-green tree, here's a non-BTF option: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805412113378.html
The colours look decent, but like you said, the conductor appears out of place.
NOMA has a “smart” line of traditionally packaged lights, but these appear to use a proprietary box: https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/cat/christmas/christmas-light...
I've had a set of these (purchased from Amazon) deployed since October and we've been happy with them. The outdoor strand is run by a QuinLED Dig-Uno board and has stood up to a lot of rain so far. The wires at the end are just flush cut short with the conductors showing, so I made some attempt to weatherproof that spot just in case.
I used WLED and some WS2811 lights for Halloween this year, and I was blown away but how much it _just worked_. As long as I kept the order of the lights correct (there are arrows, derp), they just strung along. I ended up with a decently complicated array, but as long as my counts were good, the thing just worked. Govee is a very mainstream brand currently using WS2811-based lights, and with a little knife action, you can add them in. I'm hopeful next year to play with some 2D matrix stuff in it.
The most plug-and-play WLED-compatible controller I've found is made by athom.tech and available on AliExpress <https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1101393719>. There are two versions based on the ESP32C3. One is powered by USB-C @ 5V, and the other has a barrel jack and passes through 5-24V to the lights, which is useful if you're using a higher-voltage strip like WS2813.
I used to build my own controllers from ESP development boards, but it's just not worth it when an enclosed controller with convenient connectors is priced between $10-20.
I’m a fan of these guys:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHHZTGJR
Power is passed through from either connector, so it’ll work on 5v or 12v strings. And it’s got two output channels. It’s only an ESP8266 inside, but that works fine for my needs.
For a slightly more DIY approach, try this one:
https://wiki.vdbx.io/product/flip_c3
Has everything you need to give it some sort of power and get the requisite data signal out.
The ESP8266 is no longer recommended for WLED due to its lack of resources
If you need the upgraded performance, you can pay a bit more and get the ESP32 equivalent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4Z4YG4H/
Personally, I've found the ESP8266 version adequate in the year I've owned it.
As other siblings said, they didn't upstream anything (having to install firmware from a random unmarked zip on a site is annoying), and also their controllers are badly made.
I used one for a panel I made, and it would bootloop constantly, until I added a big capacitor to the 5V rail. Pretty shoddy.
The athom stuff is a bit annoying because they never bothered to upstream anything to support their fairly minor changes - they just forked instead. You can still install upstream WLED, but the remote control support is faffy.
The mottramlabs or QuinLED boards don't have this problem.
Good to know. I haven't needed remote control support, so when I've flashed official WLED builds, I haven't noticed any issues.
another plug-and-play pre-flashed with wled: https://magwled.com/
you can find the controller on amazon comes with usb-c for 12v and 5v and currrently using it with some BTF-LIGHTING WS2812B fairy lights
Looks like that only goes up to 15W for 5V, though, which may not be enough.
I strongly suggest not buying any electronic components from Amazon, but 5VDC LED light strings should be OK.
Do not roll the dice on the power supply, buy a UL listed one. If you buy some shitty Chinese PSU and it lights your house on fire, your homeowners insurance will deny the claim.
This one puts out 30w @ 5VDC and is also UL listed: https://poliledsigns.com/shop/poli-5vdc-30w-waterproof-led-p...
Even though it says ‘waterproof’, it needs to be installed in an enclosure, NEMA 3R rated enclosure if it’s installed outdoors.
This is some major myth. Crack open your insurance policy — it’s not going to say “UL listed appliances only” or anything like that. Insurance also covers mistakes.
But you should get a good power supply anyway because the hassle is not worth it.
My bad on perpetuating the myth regarding homeowner’s insurance and UL listing, I appreciate the correction.
You’d need to read what the policy has to say about uninspected electrical work performed by or at the direction of the homeowner. If you use a hardwired power supply, non-UL/cUL equipment won’t pass an inspection [0]. You can bypass the inspection by using a cord and plug 120V rectifier which wouldn’t need to be UL listed since it wouldn’t need an inspection.
[0] NEC Section 110.3(c): https://up.codes/s/examination-identification-installation-u...
> 110.3 (C) Listing Product testing, evaluation, and listing (product certification) shall be performed by recognized qualified electrical testing laboratories and shall be in accordance with applicable product standards recognized as achieving equivalent and effective safety for equipment installed [1] to comply with this Code.
[1] ‘Equipment installed’ means hardwired.
You might need permits, inspections, and to worry about code if you’re permanently wiring this into your house electrical system. If you’re doing that, you’re probably well beyond asking about Christmas lights on HN.
ESA in Ontario, for example, allows you to do your own electrical work. Self-notification, I’m sure, is a CYA formality by them.
Ah, good point. I was picturing this setup as hardwired.
Do you have proof that claims are denied due to power supplies not rated correctly? That seems like fear mongering otherwise. Your insurance still covers your house even if you make mistakes on construction or repair yourself, I can’t imagine them denying a claim over a purchased part that you have a good faith reason to believe it will function correctly.
Also why do you specifically call out Chinese parts as being shitty? Where do you think the majority of electronics come from? This feels like xenophobia. The power supply can be cheap and crappy and come from anywhere. Or it can be great and come from anywhere. That one you linked, by the way - Made in China.
I clarified in a sibling comment, I was incorrect about UL listing being required for homeowner’s insurance but UL listing (or testing by another nationally recognized test lab) is required to pass an inspection if you’re hardwiring a piece of equipment, and fires caused by unpermitted DIY electrical work are not covered by insurance.
Amazon does not have audited supply chains. The power supply I linked is sold by Sylvania, it has a warranty, and it’s UL listed, not sold on Amazon by Xfrtteg or Psygwist. You can have quality goods manufactured in China, it’s Amazon that I don’t trust.
> Also why do you specifically call out Chinese parts as being shitty? Where do you think the majority of electronics come from?
OP is making a distinction between directly-sourced parts, versus those commissioned by a Western or Western-affiliated company that’s gone through the “trouble” of a CSA/UL certification. One is built to a price point, one is built to limit liability.
My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward. I sincerely doubt that an insurance company would be required to cover losses due to DIY electronics using parts that have not been properly safety rated. I'm surprised you think the opposite is obvious. Could just be my US perspective.
I fully expect that if I built (or bought) a power supply, plugged it into the wall, and it caught fire due to my own negligence (unintentional), that the resulting losses to the structure would be covered. (I'm in the US.) It would seem no different than if I built a fire in the fireplace that caused the issue, had a 3D printer catch fire, or had a grease fire cause the issue.
> My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward.
I would be shocked if that's true, considering here in Texas you don't need a permit or inspection to do DIY work on your own house.
WLED is nice for 1-dimensional LED strips, or if you don't really care how the animations project on your LEDs, but anything in 2 dimension is painful, the grid mapping in 2D is just overly complicated and obscure. I barely got my simple LED matrix working and I've been doing LED grids with my own software for over 10 years (so I know how easy it can be). WLED was just an awful experience for 2D led arrays or anything more complex than a single LED strip.
Have you used it recently? The matrix configurator is much improved.
Yes I have used it recently. WLED is a joke for anything other than 1-dimensional arrays. It's the way the pixels are addressed and mapped in 2 dimensions that is the problem with WLED. It's especially difficult if your "grid" is anything but an exact square or rectangle, with skipped pixels, or multiple mapped areas, etc. I found it all to be extremely frustrating and a badly designed system. I tried WLED to see what the fuss was all about, and I was not at all impressed. I have my own LED mapping system that works with 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D pixel mapped arrays, with arbitrarily placed pixels being simple to work with. Of course this is not what WLED was designed to do, and it shows. The 2-D mapping in WLED seems like a bolted-on hack.
There is support for oddly shaped arrays but you gotta use a custom mapping function, there's a generator online for it. The discord is really helpful.
Really? I connected four panels to make a display and it was a simple issue of choosing how the panels were laid out.
However, their 2D wizard might be new, so give it a shot if you haven't tried it.
Warning: don’t buy an ESP32-C6 for this. It’s not compatible with WLED/ESPHome/etc and it isn’t clear whether/when this will be resolved.
Seconding WLED, it's fantastic. Super easy to install and operate, compatible with HomeAssistant, the built in effects are great, the web app / native mobile apps are powerful but straightforward, and the community offers plenty of help and other resources.
WLED is the clear answer here. I got a simple USB controller (usb just for power) so it can’t run a a massive strand of lights (at least at full brightness) but it was perfect to dip my toes in and try out.
The Home Assistant integration works great as well.
The fact that you can install the WLED firmware _from the website_ is the cherry on top. It’s a fantastic piece of software.
Agreed. There's people on HN complaining about APIs like Web USB, but I never got why. You can ship a firmware flasher as a single .html file now! No sketchy native tools or messing around with the command line, and runs on pretty much any machine.
> complaining about APIs like Web USB, but I never got why
I think that these people are not complaining about the API itself, which might be well-designed. The problem is, in my opinion, elsewhere.
It seems to me that the main reason for criticism is that having a browser perform operations on your USB port or on your Bluetooth is potentially dangerous, if you do not know what you are doing.
At the same time, the target audience of these APIs is typically the people who cannot be bothered to or are unable to use a command line tool. So, in a way, by having these APIs in the browser, a potentially dangerous tool is being put into the hands of people who may not be capable of realizing how dangerous it actually is.
I think it is fair to note that some people often do not review the scripts they download before running them, either. They just trust the source. Which might be a good-enough approach in some cases. From that point of view, having the browser run a script from a trusted website and operating a USB device is similarly safe. Or similarly unsafe.
But with a browser having this kind of capability, there are other threat models. If a scammer wants to read the user's USB devices and look for something to exploit, they can either ask the user nicely to run their probing script. Which, for better or worse, many people that may be prone to this kind of attack, would just be unable to do.
Or, an attacker might simply use the browser's API to do the same thing. And they may even present a nice guide to the user explaining how to allow it to run. It seems to me that there is more people who would be prone to falling for this kind of trick than there is people who may be tricked into and capable of running a script.
It also supports DMX input (sACN or Art-Net) for designing and controlling complex effects from external software.
agree
This is a tangent, but I feel like we can't talk about LED christmas lights without linking to this video by tech connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBFPJ3_6ZWs
the tl;dw is that most color LED lights work by emitting a single frequency of light. Compared to classic christmas lights, which are incandescent filaments filtered through dyed glass, the LED lights look a bit... radioactive.
My personal pet peeve are white LED lights. If you're not careful to buy the ones labeled "warm" they look cold, and imo, not very festive and inviting.
Of course, this is all a matter of taste, but once I became privy to the difference, I could no longer ignore it. I guess I'm just a millennial nostalgic for the lights of my youth.
> My personal pet peeve are white LED lights. If you're not careful to buy the ones labeled "warm" they look cold, and imo, not very festive and inviting.
I completely agree. This is true also for all household LED lighting. I prefer cold for kitchen food prep areas and bathrooms, but warm everywhere else.
Warm everywhere for me. There’s something about cold white that is very depressing. You would think more blue would mean less depressing but not in my experience.
Funnily enough we're currently in the process of replacing warm lights everywhere in our house with white lights. The warm lights make us feel sleepy and depressed especially in the winter, where there's already very little sunlight up here in Canada.
What works for me is the combination of warm lights that are very bright.
Yeah, this aligns with me too, as a Swede living in Spain. In the winter time, I need strong indoor lightning that many would describe as cold and almost hostile, otherwise my body seems to go into hibernation-mode by itself. In the summers though, warm lightning is just cozier and doesn't seem so draining anymore.
oh we could write a depressing song called "blue christmas"
I'm weird and want it to change based on the time of day :)
Morning/evening is for warm (and in some cases dim) light, during "work hours" I want the whitest of white lights and as bright as possible.
I just got Phillips Hue bulbs and they can do this, it's great (you need a command center thing, but it works pretty seemlessly).
Warm light in the morning make me sleepy, while cold light in the evening make me... uncomfortable.
I solved the issue with the "Natural light" scene from Philips HUE. Not only it manages the temperature for you during the day, but also the intensity.
It only requires the "White Ambiance" lightbulds, cheaper than the "Color" ones.
I think definitely a matter of taste sprinkled with nostalgia.
I wanted to get the incandescent opaque-paint-covered lights I grew up with but the power consumption - and the number of outlets required if you follow the "don't chain more than 2 or 3 strings together" guidance - was (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) WAY higher, so I just found the closest LED version I could find.
They look pretty decent at the end of the day, and one pro is that you can get more brightness and vividness out of them (helpful if you have other newer, bright-LED decorations).
I’ve been super impressed so far with the Govee lights I’ve gotten. The app is pretty easy to use has tons of cool effects, and they have a LAN API (https://app-h5.govee.com/user-manual/wlan-guide) for most of their lights that have WiFi. Don’t have enough time this year to program a custom show but was going to start earlier next year now that I have a couple of these. The new scene stage thing they just released where you can map your lights and have them all work together is pretty slick too.
That's very good to hear, because last year on Black Friday I got a couple of dual 36' Govee light strips and am just planning on putting them up today, as a permanent install. It's been a long-time dream of mine to have permanent holiday lights. These are the ones that are the strips with an LED every few inches, individually controllable. Looking over at Amazon it looks like they have the 65ft kit I got for $70 right now ($40 off coupon).
Last year we put up this Govee LED grid "curtain" and my son had some fun programming it.
Just keep in mind that unless you’re hitting 60 LEDs a meter you’ll be able to clearly see the individual lights. Even with frosted lenses.
I just mention it because you’re planning on putting the time and effort into a permanent install.
Thanks. Yes, I'll definitely be able to see individual lights and I'm ok with that. I have played around with some of those "neon light" LED strips that have a nearly constant string of LEDs, only white and not individually addressable. Those are a nice look, but for my holiday lights I'm ok with individual lights.
Is Govee the down-cone style? Or are there also others doing that? There's been a couple of houses that have this and I wasn't sure what they are using, but it's the only one that I would consider doing whole house exterior. Many others look too sharp.
Yes, though they have other types too. We’ve been thrilled with ours. I’ve never done Christmas lights because I don’t do ladders, so having a permanent fixture is attractive. Plus we can use them on big holidays too.
I have big reservations about ‘smart home’ stuff, and it’s only the second such device in our house. But I’m clearly losing that battle, and will be looking into some ways to mitigate the privacy concerns. But gosh, it sure is nice to pick from a gazillion light patterns.
I have them on a separate vlan that my iPhone can see. They can only see other govee devices and my iPhone so not super worried.
Govee has a plug and play solution. You can accomplish that he same thing with WLED and programmable strips, however.
Half the price but four times the headache.
A lot of people here are recommending WLED for the controller, but I would suggest you look at the Pixelblaze [1] instead. I've used both in a bunch of different projects and strongly prefer Pixelblaze over WLED.
Some reasons why: - It has a much more intuitive user interface - It's far easier to program new patterns. Programming is done in-browser with a language that's a subset of Javascript, with code changes being applied in realtime. - Due to the way its rendering engine works, the patterns it produces are generally far more 'organic' looking and smoother than most of the WLED ones. - It's possible to map LEDs in arbitrary 2D or 3D configurations (think lights strewn all over a Christmas tree), which WLED can't really do at all. - If you have multiple Pixelblazes you can get them to sync with each other over Wifi. - A really helpful community forum.
Downside: - The firmware isn't open source, though some of its tooling is, and the firmware is stable and gets fairly regular updates, so it's not a huge issue to me. YMMV.
For the LEDs, you probably want wired bullet-style strings of LEDs rather than the thin copper LED strips since they're generally more suited to outside use. By far the most common (and generally cheapest) type of LEDs are WS-2812B or similar. They're OK, though you might notice they don't have good definition at low brightness levels. APA-102 or equivalent are a bit more expensive, but have MUCH better dynamic range, so I'd suggest going for these if you can. There are other better (and more expensive) LEDs still, but it starts to become diminishing returns, plus they can be hard to come by or find suitable controllers for. If you're running lengths of more than a 150 or so LEDs then power starts to matter, and you'll either need to inject power regularly into the strips, and/or use LEDs designed to take 12V or 24V. These can come with caveats such as worse power consumption and/or fewer addressable LEDs per meter, so research what you're buying carefully.
This gets such a huge thumbs up that I had to scroll up and reread it to make sure this wasn’t my own post from a revived thread from last year!
I’ve been using a pixelblaze with a long string of cheap 2812 LEDs on my Christmas tree for three years now with tons of compliments from neighbors.
I’m an embedded software guy, and every year I mean to dig in and try roll my own, or do something clever with an RP2040 board (also a shoutout for the Pimoroni Plasma), but the demands of life and “get the light show started” mean I keep using the Pixelblaze.
I even upgraded to their newer versions last year, and used some of the smaller ones to make some LED tutus for my girls that synced pattern with the tree (the tutus were synced with each other for a Christmas show, but it was trivial to then add the tree for fun afterwards).
The mapping is huge for the wow factor, and the pixelblaze makes it so much easier to get something fast and good enough.
There’s so many community-shared patterns to choose from, and it’s been easy to make small modifications to look better once mapped to a tree, though most work as-is.
My project I won’t get done this year is to try to make some calibration patterns and use ChatGPT to analyze some photos/videos to make a 3-D map, but I’ll realistically probably end up with the vaguely-triangular 2-D map again; I can get it done in about 30 minutes now.
The following is a couple years ago. I think last year I was up to 1100 LEDs and the mapping was a bit better, but I didn’t take good videos.
I ended up buying a couple strings of Twinkly lights a while back - after considering a diy solution. The mobile app has been solid and (assuming they didn't muck it up) there's are libraries out there for interfacing to them as well (over WiFi). The cost is not cheap but seems fair to me and seems to be well built. (The light mapping is pretty fun. You can zigzag a bunch of lights across a wall and basically create a low res display.)
Another +1 for Twinkly. I don't own them but a close friend does. And to say they are impressive is an understatement. You just wrap them like you do normally and the software is smart enough to map each light's physical location.
For any addressable light system for a tree or bush I would recommend getting more lights than you think you need.
My personal christmas decoration consists of a charly brown christmas tree with a single ornament on it. It started as a joke (and convenience for ongoing construction), but it became a tradition. I truly appreciate the zen nature of unfolding it into an appealingly broken pattern and also having just a single ornament.
+1 for twinkly lights. I've had some WS2801s that are about a decade old from Aliexpress for ages. This time lighting the tree, discovered quite a few scorch marks and melted insulation. Twinkly lights were 66% off locally, so gave 'em a go. They're still RGB, but blend into the tree a fair bit better. The LED spatial mapping stuff kinda works - it's not perfect, but gives you enough to be able to have decent fades top to bottom and side to side.
I have no intention of swapping to Twinkly for my normal accent lighting around the house - btf-lighting.com + WLED is still your friend for that.
Yeah the Twinkly stuff is crazy. I bought some for my wife, who is a major Christmas decor-head, a couple years back. She throws those things on the tree, uses the app to do the mapping, and the animations are really impressive. Very much like what you see on the website.
Another +1. I've found that it takes a lot of scans to get a solid representation of the tree, but I love the way they show you the quality of the scan (LEDs with well known positions are green, poorly are red, and mid is yellow). I think I had to do about 30 scans to get all of the lights I cared about, but I also put lights deep into the tree.
I wish there was a bit more customization. Particularly around the flashing effect. Also, oddly, the color settings are HSV, but they don't give you the V, so you can't get a clean grey color. I wanted dim white lights with sparkle flashes, but I haven't been able to make that happen.
Second Twinkly for the question of “will this company still be around in a few years”. They seem to have branched out into non-holiday lights too which improves their business stability.
I'm a huge fan of the Falcone system. It's a lot more that things that have been posted so far. It's allows you to grow in lots of different ways. The F16V5 costs about $250 and needs a power supply.
This is a simplistic view of what it looks like.
http://www.brianhensley.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chris...
This is a huge space to get into. I’m on my fourth year doing an outdoor light show.
My personal preference is 12v ws2811 bullet-style voltage-regulated nodes. They’re extendable, individual nodes on a strand are replaceable if you’re willing to do some cutting and crimping.
I like the 12v because you can go for longer strands without losing colors from voltage drop. Regulated over a resistive voltage divider = less heat.
As has been mentioned, you can install WLED onto a microcontroller and have a web-page for a remote control.
I'm sure you know but for others reading, 12v ws2811 are grouped in threes, so not individually addressable. 5v is, and when you're working at scale power injection isn't a huge deal as you'll be doing it anyway.
Always standardise your connectors. I'm a fan of the Ray Wu ones.
ESP/WLED driven is my preference, but the Falcon controllers are popular amongst people who are more DIY/woodworking oriented as they're much simpler to set up and not _heaps_ more expensive. Falcon Player/xlights is the standard software for designing/playback of your show regardless of hardware.
Coro props (corrugated plastic, corflute) are a cheap and effective way to stand out from the crowd. Animatronics, smoke etc are also an option when going more advanced.
It's a lot of work. You rarely want to start after October or order your goods after July. You are running a live production and things will go wrong. Good luck to anyone entering the space, it's very fun and expensive!
There's multiple types. I use the bullet type regulated 12V ws2812 for outdoor applications and they are individually addressed. I also use 12V ws2812 RGBCW (RGB+white cold+white warm) unregulated (resistor) led strips which are grouped in threes for indoor. Both work just fine with wled or custom software (e.g. micropython / C++ ) on esp32.
Oh really? Thank you, I haven't come across individual 12v, I steered away from them originally for that reason. Have you played with GS8208? They seemed a bit too new last year for me to invest, but they look very nice!
> I'm sure you know but for others reading, 12v ws2811 are grouped in threes, so not individually addressable. 5v is, and when you're working at scale power injection isn't a huge deal as you'll be doing it anyway.
I haven't found this to be the case. All my lights use WS2811 chips, and are individually addressable. The 12v does have to be regulated down to 5v, but that's happening on the node anyway.
> Coro props (corrugated plastic, corflute) are a cheap and effective way to stand out from the crowd.
I'll add to this that if you have a 3D-Printer, you can do some neat stuff if you're up to designing it. I am in the middle of adding 16" snowflake props to my setup this year. It took a couple of revisions, but I've got them all setup and I'm just finishing the controller to drive them now.
It is a super fun hobby, and as averageRoyalty mentioned - it can be spendy.
I played with WS2812 for a while, but now I have an AlphaPix system from HolidayCoro. My starter kit was ~$500 with 100 lights. They are large C9 bulbs, now permanently installed on the house eaves.
The popular free software, xLights, has a ton of features (and pitfalls). You can export the sequence to Falcon on a RasPi.
I would rather get back to programming my own sequences. That was a lot of fun on Arduino with WS2812.
I know programming but only very rudimentary hardware, how difficult is this to do? Are there guides?
Installing WLED is about as easy as one could hope for - so easy, it's kind of unbelievable. Provided that your device has USB, you plug it in, go to the WLED installer page (https://install.wled.me/) and press the install button.
In terms of making custom sequences for lights, my go to is Xlights - an Open source project that allows you to create layouts, and build sequences.
Adafruit has a couple holiday guides based on their Feather boards and NeoPixel lights. https://learn.adafruit.com/festive-feather-holiday-lights/ov...
White, non-blinking lights are the only acceptable holiday lights. All others are exceedingly tacky and should be banned.
I didn't know you had Internet access up in the mountain, Mr Grinch.
My parents have always gone for an absolutely huge number of white mini-lights on the tree. So many that they have to be plugged into a dimmer circuit so that the intensity isn’t blinding.
I've used strings of Twinkly lights for a couple seasons now. They can sometimes be found on eBay for cheap. They're easy to set up, whether standalone or by clustering multiple units into one larger virtual canvas. The app has a lot of good looking animated patterns included.
Several years ago I made a simple 2D display with WS2812B led strings, just daisy chained together for a serial interface. Controlled by an ESP8266, with a number of static images (snowflakes, xmas trees) that scroll or display with various effects (e.g. falling snowflakes). 9 led strings are simply draped over a ~9 ft tall pvc rack in a coarse 2D front and back display. Not that much work to put together and surprisingly nice looking effects are possible.
If you're interested in DIY:
LED lights as a string or strip - sk8612 are RGBW, which you need if you want a nice looking white. Lots of strips of varying density and waterproofing are available everywhere; strings ("pixels") can be harder to find but are available on AliExpress.
Controller is https://quinled.info/
Runs wled which has a simple web interface, mobile apps, and works with home assistant.
I keep wondering why lights aren't getting built into new-build homes. They're no longer bulbs, but LEDs, they're programmably colored (you can do orange/purple for Halloween, etc), and they'd be practically invisible when off.
Have them around eaves/gutters, windows, whatever. Is there some aspect of this I'm not getting that makes it impractical (or ugly in the off seasons)?
It’s probably as simple as builders being cheap. It won’t help them charge more.
Unless it’s a home built for one customer.
I would take the new "Plasma 2350 w" from Pimoroni https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/plasma-2350-w and connect some APA102/Dotstar or WS2812/Neopixel either from BTF Lightning, Amazon or Pimoroni
If you ever want to go all out with a musical light show, I have some recommendations here: https://aluhrs.com/blog/holiday-lights-electronics/
For your specific question, Wally’s Lights is great, and like others have mentioned, something running WLED to control them is a great choice.
Is this the best choice if I wanted to wire the outside of entire house?
I had fun with this little board: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/plasma-2350?variant=42092...
There're a couple of other variants of that board too, one with wifi. Basically you can animate Neopixels with about 6 lines of pretty simple python.
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-plus-rgbw-pm
If you're fine with one colour for the whole strip, this is an easy plug-and-play-ish solution.
Somewhat related topic: anyone used something like the Luxedo to do a projection mapping? It seems like it’s more complicated and expensive but I love the idea of doing something cool to the house for Halloween and Christmas without having to lug out a ton of lights and decorations.
There are several open source projection mapper projects that run on a RaspPi, or other platforms, here are a few of them:
https://github.com/arisona/mpm
There are media players and graphics generators that will run on a RaspPi also. Finding a bright enough projector and sheltering it for outdoor use might be the main challenge.
Another approach might be a galvo scanned laser with DMX software to control it, though there may be safety/liability issues with that.
I‘m fascinated by these projection setups ever since I learned they’re a thing! But Jesus is the Luxedo stuff pricey?! I’d love to learn about something similar but in a kinda OSS/DIY kind of style…
We've been happy with our Twinkly lights (after several years). Not really "DIY" but you can create your own light scheme/shows.
Returning my black Friday set. The app is a split-brained and buggy.
Weird. We don't ask much of it, but it's worked pretty well for I think 3 seasons now. The app was not impressive, but did work. The "remapping" of lights can be a little wonky, but each time my kids were able to complete the task.
The only nitpick I have is it's paired to only one phone, so we pick one person in our family to "manage" the lights.
I want a mesh grid of LEDs that I can lay across the house maybe with 6” between each one so I get a low res screen of dots and then play Die Hard on it to see if people figure it out. It would kind of be like a TV but with 9 out of 10 pixels missing, more or less.
You could use ws28xx/skxx based addressible strips laid out in rows. Usually WLED would be recommended to drive it, but for playing a video, the teensy fastled library comes with a demo specifically doing what you discuss with a film.
https://quinled.info/2019/06/03/what-digital-5v-12v-rgbw-led... good intro to the subject.
interesting thanks I’ll check it out
Maybe i can piggyback onto this question: Are there timer switches that can change the times depending on the calendar? I want to turn on some lights shortly after sunset but they don't have a brightness sensor. So i'd like to do it by time of day.
If you're already using Home Assistant and WLED, this is a cinch. You could even write an automation that plays your home team's colors each night they win a game.
no, i want as little tech as possible, i imagine entering the date and the latitude and perhaps the number of minutes before/after sunset/sunrise.
Just about any wifi smart plug will do this. If you don't want your plug to rely on other people's servers, a quick google found this one: https://mytouchsmart.com/mytouchsmart-outdoor-indoor-sunsmar.... I'm sure there are others.
Thanks. Looks like there are timer switches with calendars, they are sometimes called "astro timer switch".
If you don't want to go full-blown Home Assistant or anything "smart", you can still handle this with a self-contained switch.
I installed a Honeywell similar to this one [1]. You tell it the date and your lat/long, and it knows the times for dawn and dusk.
I had a previous version of it 10 years ago [2]. Worked great.
Not quite what you're looking for perhaps, but I'm very happy with my "dumb" lights controlled with a couple smart plugs flashed with Tasmota.
We have the Twinkly lights and they are pretty neat. You put them on your tree and you don't have to be careful about where or how you lay them out because step 2 is point your phone camera at the tree and it turns the lights on and off to map where each bulb is. You move around the tree until they are all mapped (lights go from orange to green when mapped).
The app has a bunch of canned patterns and there's an online site for user designs and of course you can design your own. It's a lot of fun and they aren't terribly expensive (there was a good black friday sale).
I bought these and they are great. They strike a balance of programmable, but have a kit. Relatively simple for a novice
Has anyone come across many distributors for HD108 LED strips per chance? I've found only the bare LEDs on Aliexpress currently.
Maybe relevant: https://youtu.be/TvlpIojusBE
For Twinkly: https://github.com/scrool/xled
The Eufy / Govee outdoor light strips are probably the easiest to install and setup.
Check out Twinkly. Little pricey, but if you can grab them on sale they're super cool.
