Ultimate LED Effects: New Software and Hardware!
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2024
- Experience the amazing new LED control software from NightDriverLED.com that can run multiple effects spanning dozens of strips over WiFi with buffering and more! For my book on ASD and Autism, check out the free sample on Amazon: amzn.to/3tRuMmB
LED Strip, 5V: amzn.to/3H6C6hi
ESP32 M5 Stick C Plus: tinyurl.com/bde...
16x16 LED Matrix (3 required): amzn.to/3TPM0vb
5V 8A Beefy Power Supply: amzn.to/41MAz9C
It's been said before, but Dave you really are doing retirement the right way. You're super smart, you made your money, now you're just having fun, but the key point is, you're sharing it. Thank you.
You're very welcome, and thanks for the kind words!
@@DavesGarageit’s great but WLED is still King of the led and it always will be for both extreme ease of use and customization plus the only choice for home automation enthusiasts combined with the absolute best and most versatile local based home automation platform ever made Home Assistant. Plus both platforms work amazing when exposed to LLM’s with local voice control.
I think Dave should come back out of retirement and save windows GUI mess and the other mess that is Windows.
@@ChrisS-oo6fl might be the king of leds right now...only because there is nothing better. WLED is real easy to use. almost idiot-proof. But it is very limited and not very reliable with anything beyond a simple installation. Dave talks about some of the most common deficiencies inherent to WLED. Maintaining synchronization without having to implement DMX is currently the challenge i'm trying to overcome in a very large installation project. wled just isn't cutting it.
I think I picked the right day to recieve delivery of an ESP32 and 5m strip of individually addressable LEDs!
I really love these projects of yours. When you get hold of something you really make something great out of it.
Dave, I am a huge LED nerd and I have zero skills when it comes to doing this kind of stuff. However, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to explain every little detail, as it gives me hope of maybe being able to have some cool projects like some of your creations once I get a bit more confidence. Cheers, and thanks!
Been working with FastLED libraries for years now. Gave up because commercial products are just easier but seeing your video on this topic just tickled my heart
First time I have heard of an ESP32 microcontroller was through Dave's Garage and I have been intriguedever since. I am fairly new at electronics but I am now going down the rabbit hole of microcontrollers and learning how to program them, I do wanna learn about bit banging, more about uart, spi, i2c, and eeprom stuff. Its soo exciting!
You are learning so much with this stuff and it's endless fun! I totally enjoy the stuff we have available nowadays for small money - having started with electronics end of the 70ties; what a difference compared to now!
That patio umbrella is wicked cool!
I hid 5meter led Strips under my window and wired it to my subwoofer. Since with pure voltage I'm only able to get 3 different colors with that setup, an esp32 seems to be the perfect upgrade. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I just selected the profiles and components i need for my bathroom renovation. If all goes well in a couple months I’ll be taking a bath feeling like I’m at a Flaming Lips show and I’ll have you to thank
This guy's whole channel is one big Mesmerizer.
Thanks for the background on the independent channels on the umbrella - Big fan of Nightdriver. Thanks for all your effort.
Mate you are not retired, at least not your brain. Nightdriver is an amazing project, thank you from all of us that use it.. Mind blowing features in free code.. thanks mate.!
Thanks for that! I appreciate it!
I'm working on something cool with NightDriver at the moment. I love that you've made it easy to use!
I love the way your presentation is so detailed, informative, intelligent, educational, and very eloquently presented.. Concise and solid!
Glad it was helpful!
I've built and put the WLED strips all over my house and love them. under the bar, in the wine rack, under the beds and around the living room and office. I will give this a try and play with the box of ESP32's I have and see if I can expand my obsession with NightDriver. I have yet to expand to outside but that's coming.... Thanks Dave for fueling my obsession.
Thanks Dave, I really enjoy you sharing your technical expertise. I am a serious LED strip show buff… my computers, lamps, t.v. backlights…ect. I prefer to program my own code and I prefer geometric designs…you never cease to amaze me with your creativity and innovation. 😊
I love seeing explanations of scope creep in action. Very validating
Stopped in for the lights, learned how to plow more efficiently with my oxen!😊
“Is one of my passions “ is a slight understatement! Great work Dave
The late Jim Thompson designed many of those LED billboard ICs.
Dave is one serious pixel pusher, thank you!!!
Dave you rekindled my love of hardware and now have some impressive LED's addressable lighting in the house, also getting back into C programming!
The house LEDs and Tiki Umbrella are unhinged. I love it.
I have tried your software countless times over the last two years and have never got it to work once. I have about 10-15 different board styles/types and have tried every possible combination. Then you came out with a web installer like WLED and still the same issues. My last attempt was about a month ago and after spending another 2 hours trying to get a device to boot, I just went right back to WLED. WLED's software just works and can do most of the same effects and then some. Reminds me of the old PC vs MAC commercials where the MAC version simply worked.
Nice work. Thank you for sharing. I dabbled with microcontroller attached LEDs a few years ago. I’d love to see how you handle the power delivery to each ESP32 as well as the LEDs.
I just power the MCUs off the strip/matrix DIN/VCC/GND, the power supply is connected to the power injection point(s). The MCU will only draw the current it needs.
@@daa3417 yeah but even with the LEDs getting direct external power, you still may need quite a large amount of power, depending on the # of pixels, % of pixels lit at any one time, colors, and how bright the LEDs will be lit.
Specs on a 300 strip alone claims it needs up to 90W if all lit as white, full brightness. 90W is 18A @ 5V.
A good rule of thumb is there are 3 LEDs per pixel, each LED can draw 20mA. The WS2812B controller in each pixel also draws a small amount of current, I think 0.6mA even with no LEDs lit. Doesn't sound like much but when you compound that with lots of pixels in an array, that can add up. 166 pixels is already 100mA with nothing on.
I need to correct something you said:
LED strips (no matter which ones) and full blown video walls in stadiums or conference rooms are as much related to each other than a RC car and a BMX X7. They have *nothing* in common.
I work for a video wall manufacturer and develop and service large format video walls as my job for the last 30 years. I know every detail how they work. I’ve seen it all.
Interestingly as I understand it, the NTP sync approach is also used by Sonos to allow multiple WiFi connected speakers to play the same audio and remain in-phase.
Very cool! Looking forward to seeing more on the NightDriver Desktop application. Being able to transition effects across separate strips/procs would be very nice. Especially at 30fps.
I am curious about the ESP32 at the beginning of the video - not the M5. I bought four of the AITRIP D1 Mini NodeMCU ESP32 ESP-WROOM-32 to test with.
Search for WLED esp32 tutorial.
I originally came across you and your channel looking around for LED ideas (wow its been years) and have taken in a great deal of your content ..... Thank you! the way you can think inside the code is something to behold.. the Wi-Fi timing stuff on this project is particularly mind-blowing..but the whole package including all you share about the work history and all the other stuff is priceless 👍 Like Comment and Subscribe, oh and don't forget to hit that Bell Icon
Awesome - thanks for letting us see these projects.
DUDE!!! This is exactly what I asked about under your last video! Thank you so much for doing this video Dave, absolute LEGEND :)
Yes he is quite the LEDgend 😅
LED + Effect + Dave = Ultimate !!
I've been running WLED on my xmass lights for years. But I will try this for sure.
I think I have a spare M5stack Fire kicking around. Might need to give this a go. Thanks. 👍
I have recently suddenly become interested in wearable LEDs, so I am now re-watching your videos on LEDs. Have you ever done a wearable project?
5:31 Tape Reals, love it!
Looking forward to the mesmeriser and to see what it can do with my hexagonal board.
Anyone try to install the night driver software on a quinled uno/quad? I assume it would work as it is an esp32 with the power distribution stuff.
Nice! love these projects! very cool.
Hi Dave. Thank you for all the projects and knowledge you share with us. Is there any way you can do a tutorial on the atomic lamp? It’s so cool! Love your voice btw. You should do audio books.
Absolutely love your videos man! I appreciate this in depth showcase on how everything works, I can't to move away from all those awful apps that LED strips come with.
Careful having flame effects that can be seen from outside, someone might think its an actual fire and call 911.
Dave, you need a mega tree
Not sure if it’s still running, but your should check out the house around 12245 NE 140th St - very impressive Xmas light display
Hi Dave, the LED's are stunning,ly beautiful 👍
Thank you for the efforts put into this!
My pleasure!
The problem with software like nightdriver is that you're not really building anything yourself. It's just similar to buying a finished product.
A true diy is writing drivers, reading datasheet, inventing patterns yourself.
This is just to easy...
So here is a challenge, maybe not, last I checked, sim hub could only deal with a single series LED setuo. If your argb strip/fan cannot be daisy chained then they will either all be the same or you only have access to 1 strip/fan. What I am thinking of is having a "listener" controller in between multiple strips and another contoller that sends out whatbis configured in sim hub. This should allow as many strips as needed, I think your last solution shows this but has far better than I will likely find in my market, the last thing I was told was that the data in port will never be able to listen quick enough to do this
Awesome ! Happy New Year !....cheers.
Gave it my best shot. Loaded ledstrip(N,S) on a known working ESP32, got 100% on the install, saw the wrapping up message, then got and Error - serial port not ready. Rebooted the ESP, selected connect to WiFi but won't find any WiFi networks.
Hi Dave. Enjoy your videos. I have been dabbling with FastLed for a while. Put together a 2 meter wide (130 led) by 15 row display with esp32 that does a very nice job of scrolling text. Used it as a Christmas decoration this year. Set to 2x font size for better visibility. Very easy to see from the street. Intensity only set to 20.
Thank you for sharing the M5Stack Core2. I was lucky enough to find one around the same price and ordered it. What instructions I am hoping to stumble across is more about your integration, where I see seamless transitions between affects, or what appears to be the more 'server driven' programming of the devices. As always your descriptions drive a desire to learn "How he did that". I seem to be halted with integrating Wi-Fi connection to program or connect to the devices I have been working with. Thanks again for all the inspiration.
Great video!! In a future video could you show some closeups of where you locate the power supplies and how you keep the power supplies and esp32 modules hidden? Your installs look really clean.
This is how CZcams should be!
Thats is exactly what i was looking for my project D: Thanks!
Hi sir,
Been your subscriber till now,
With this one I am your big fan now ❤❤😀😀
Respect++
Love from India 🇮🇳🇮🇳🙏🙏
holy crap, Nightdriver has came a long way from you being on the fence about posting it online
Thanks Dave.
Thank you for LED videos. This is something I am into and need more ideas. Any future videos on how to get a LED strip into HomeKit using a ESP32/dig uno/quad? Another project I have been thinking about trying is how do use a LED strip and use it for a garage parking light to tell you when your in car enough.
😊 Idea: LED Photo Diodes, in Pairs, Across the Garage (Facing Each other, in a Sender / Receiver arrangement), to Identify you passed the 6' To Go Line, triggers initial LED to light up, next set of Photos at 5', 4' 3', 2', 1', etc.,
Software determines how many LED Photo Diodes have "Tripped", and increases # of Lit LED's, and increases the RED content of the RGB set, set last Photodiodes either at the 1' line, or shorter distance (6", 4", 2", etc!) To the "Stop" Point!
That's but one idea for Sensors. Others, might be Ultrasonic, Passive Infrared, Pressure Strips, Capacitive Sensors, or others might work to sense the vehicles position! Then it's possible to use combinations, if you like!
As for the garage I’m not one to tell someone what to do but I’d be weary of complex solutions to simple problems. I use a tennis ball on a string, gravity never fails.
There are TONS of instructable-like pages on the internet. Search for [ultrasonic traffic light] Use the inexpensive ultrasonics on your front wall to sense how close the car is - it's not like you need sub-mm LIDAR/laser precision, though you _could_ go that way...) Plain ole red, green, yellow to indicate how far to pull forward have been used in probably hundreds of projects.
You _could_ do it with homekit or Nightdriver but that's all overkill. I could do it with a $0.10 CH32V003 in under an hour just because I can see all the parts from my current view. :-) Those super-cheap SONAR sensors(they look like the eyes from that movie robot) that measure time of reflection from a generated pulse are like $1 each. A bit of math (and "far, near, and too near" are easy - you don't even need to do the math) tells you which light to turn on.
This has been an introductory Arduino project for years. Good luck!
@@daa3417 - And yet, his "Quest" was one more about "Taming The Dragon" of "Electronics Comprehension" - it seems to me!
Just a heads up. I was watching your videos the other day, and I subscribed to your channel back then. I just started watching this video and I had the subscribe button waiting for me. Somehow someway I got unsubscribed from your channel but I know, for a fact it wasn’t me. Just started watching the stuff the other day.
Very nice video and project, THX.
Me: Hey Dave, how many LEDs did you install at your house?
Dave: Yes.
Shields up captain!
Remember its the leds and rgb not the cores that determines a workstations performance
Definitely need a serious 5v power supply for that many ws2812s
Don’t use 5v ws2812 for long runs there are 12v and 24v equivalent addressable leds available. But indoors isn’t so bad I have several 8x32 panels and for the effects I like at the brightness I’m comfortable with cheap 2.4A usb chargers (limited in software to 1.8A) are perfectly adequate.
@@daa3417 Another idea is to use a higher voltage power bus and use small buck converters at certain intervals.
Many are quite tiny and claim they can handle 2A. I was thinking of using this approach for my 16x300 matrix project.
I wanna be this guy some day
Holy sheeeeesh.
It's settled going to use this
You could have it so it's camera/light or proximity triggered so the lights react to your movements or the room.
Great video as always Dave. Working here with a scoreboard led panel , it´ll be ready soon. (if everythings works fine) . Happy 2024. Greetings from Asuncion, Paraguay. PD: Past December i put some very nice addreasble strips to decorate my house. We´re trying to follow you... way way behind. Like 30 years behind....
Love those esp32 modules i think there far better than most IOT devices i would say it should be at leased in the top 5, anyway Dave i think its time we have an intervention, so Dave repeat after me, I Dave have an LED RGB Addiction..... love your work keep it up.
This is a seriously good video. Thnx dave. Im just about to get into it
Sheesh, impressive tech for sure, no doubt about that, but blinkies drive me up the wall lmao.
Subbed for the LED content.
Tere! Greetings from Estonia!
I think you said it in the beginning(tere). :}
Hiya Dave! Thanks for another awesome video! Can you perhaps go a bit more into how spanning strips work? For example if I have a few Strips in a single room but there are some cabinets in the way, how can I model that "gap" so to speak? It would be cool if effects just keep running as if there is a strip in the gap, if that makes sense. Thanks!
I'll give this ago , at the min i use wled and never had a problem with it and all 7 devices sync perfectly with each other but im open to try other programs cheers
If only it stopped raining enough for someone to go outside & enjoy those.
Impressive!
Fantastic
Seems like there was a run on m5stack core 2’s. I never picked one up because I didn’t see a real benefit for the added expense over the stacks of ESP32s I buy from aliexpress but this video makes a good case.
Meh. I've been working on the NightDriver source for several months. I'm a big fan of the $5 Ali boards over the $50 ones with mystery GPIOs used and screens in my way and such. If I accidentally explode one, I cry less.
But if you like the M5Stacks, buy the M5Stacks - I'm not not your budget keeper. :-) I'm just saying that it's totally possible to be productive in the project - and blinking a crap-ton of lights - with the very type of boards you're describing from Ali.
I'm not your budget keeper, but I'll be your personal shopper: skip the single core parts like S2 and all their current RISC-V parts. Even if you save the extra few dimes for the S3 (I like them, but they have challenges....) definitely DO spent the dimes for at least 2MB of SRAM if not 4 or 8. It's increasingly hard to keep the core product running on the "bare" 512/520K boards. Good luck and hope to see you in the code soon!
Thanks for the advice, everything you’ve said are the reasons I’ve avoided them so far. $60 shipped vs ~$10/unit is a strong enough argument on it’s own. I’ve used WLED for all my projects along with a few tvs backlit with Hyperion, I look forward to trying nightdriver and I very much look forward to HUB75 support as matrices are my current preoccupation. I’m not to the level to contribute code to a project like this at this time but I always make an effort to help out projects that I enjoy by answering any questions and issues posted to the GitHub that I’m able to. I figure every issue that I close is that much less valuable dev taken up.
Your point about frying them is probably the most compelling, all through my electronics education including tech high school and college I’ve only fried half a dozen ICs etc and not in many years but I just recently fried an ESP32 due to mistaking the CND pin for a GND when it was hooked up to a 10A supply. I would’ve been pretty pissed at myself if it wasn’t a sub $10 board.
Your most interesting video to date, for me, were your findings on the AMD machine running a VM where more RAM slowed down throughput.
Awesome! You gave me a lot of ideas now :-D
This is awesome. I’m working on a plan for a 9 garage yard where people walk along side these garages. My dream would be a presence sensor detecting the location of an individual and only illuminating the close proximity and following them. I could see complications for a change when a person is just standing, to an increasing pulse then a flash and then a change in color. That’d be awesome. Any thoughts?
What's funny, is if I didn't already know he basically created, or at least is a major contributor to, the nightdriver project, I wouldn't know it was a shameless plug, until the very end...
One question though... I know lots of "wifi" lights actually don't "just" require WiFi, but also require Internet, and I'm wondering if this does require Internet or not, for the WiFi function... Obviously, for the time feature, it probably would, or else a local time server, but still...
There is a timeout in all effects that are running in "feed me pixels" mode. If they lose contact with the server for N seconds, they revert to showing 'local' content generated by the local CPU.
Other than the NTP server, which is optional but recommended if you're trying to get multiple independent strips synchronized, they don't "phone home" to any nefarious servers if that's what you're asking. (If you want to run a local NTP server that's fine, too. Tell the boards to use your ntp server. Doesn't matter if it's 13 minutes off of the "real' time; it matters only that they're marching to the same click track.
I wish this had a home assistant integration
This is so fantastic and Ilove all the examples! Do you ever take on any suggestions for projects?
Sigh. I work with 144 / m LED and the biggest headache is voltage drop with such a strip. 144 at 5v requires power injection every 1.5 feet for max brightness. At min 1 meter. The density may be pretty. The voltage drop is not.
0:51 specifically you are showing a JST-SP connector, this is important since there are a wide variety of "JST" connectors, and a novice might have a hard time finding the one needed for wire-to-wire connecting with the correct pitch. The JST-SP is a wire-to-wire connector that has a handy lock to prevent disconnect & a pitch (distance between pins) of 2.54mm, others such as JST-PH & JST-XH are for board-to-wire connections, do not lock, and one is of the wrong pitch. They do require a special crimping tool but so far one tool has worked for all my crimping needs with all the different types of JST connectors with the biggest hurdle being my fat fingers not working well with tiny things. I know you can get everything with connectors already attached but where's the fun in DIY if you don't 'Do It Yourself'?
Hi Dave! Have you considered integrating LoRa support for long range interconnects between strips/modules? I personally have never used it, but I have read that it works quite well and there are many ESP32's that have that functionality integrated.
Some thoughts. Dave is using WiFi for high speed TCP/IP data distribution at multiple megabits/sec. LoRa is tremendously slower, and the longer the range the slower it needs to go. It really can't carry significant data in the way that NightDriver requires in the examples of this video.
If one only wanted to invoke built-in effects, that might work fine by LoRa. Instead of trying to send, say 900 bytes to individually control 300 LEDs, you might send just a few bytes to tell a display to begin effect #7. Or even effect 7 with color purple and speed 20. It might be harder to achieve such tight timing synchonization, but it could be good enough.
Thanks!
It is never too much dave!! never!!😊😊 I just wanted to say keep up the great work man I’ve been watching your videos forever and you are about one of the only people online that speaks my language … this amazing and ever changing LED language of infinite programming and possibilities!! (you are definitely miles ahead of me, but I’ve been loving addressable Leds for a good 10 years or a little more and all of the new projects and micro controllers and everything continually and presently coming out makes my heart skip a beat) lol… I think some people possibly equate this feeling to falling in love… but not us…not my buddy, Dave and I…nope…see we equate this ‘skipped beat’ feeling to finding a newer AND better microcontroller… when you showed the rear of your house, and then mentioned that all of the LEDs were 144/M, and your comment earlier that was something to the effect of ‘just because you can doesn’t mean you should’ sounded like you had some kind of a spy inside of my head lol… I have the basic start to a permanent lighting display on my house, I used Jay channel and drilled the 12.5 mm hole every 2 inches… And I went with the diffused 2811 pixels… 2500 Leds in and I realized I should’ve use 12 V… Face to palm multiple times! … when I am testing if I ever have the brightness up above 25 to 30% my wife gives me that death stare LMFAO … which only promised me to accidentally turn it up to 100% or so and then oh no, my app crashed oops! Anyway, sorry for the rant man I love the channel and your sense of humor… And I love how you say all of that stuff without breaking cadence in your delivery! Keep up the great work Dave! haha😊😊😎😎
Thanks for the kind words, glad you're enjoying it! It means a lot!
Sorry, but, "available, open source under GPLv3 for non-commercial use". That sentence doesn't make sense. If it's GPLv3, you can do whatever you want with it as long as you publish code changes (if a changed binary is distributed etc, see the license), but it doesn't stop you from selling it.
This was a cool video.
I bought my daughter an LED strip for her bicycle wheels that would paint and image or simple animation as the wheel turns. It was cool and served to protect her at night from t-bone impacts. So, I challenge you to recreate a similar effect on a fan/windmill with 1 strip that could screen some portion of a movie! Muwahahaha.
You might also use a ceiling fan, but balancing the weight might be a challenge.
@@arty2kYou mean PoV? There are plenty of addressable pov projects out here already.
@@daa3417 pov is what?
The interesting thing about mobile LEDs is that they can represent dozens or hundreds of rows of LEDs depending on speed of rotation.
@@arty2k I believe in this context it stands for Persistence of Vision where our eyes/brains retain what we see for a split second, thus allowing multiple images flashed in rapid succession seem to be seamless.
cool
Hey Dave, ever look at what Adafruit has? They have been doing LED display, projection, DIY project... and control for decades and have open source diagrams and control software, and there's tons of software projects related...
I can't answer what he's ever looked at, but I'm quite sure he's familiar with them. There's support for Adafruit Feather S3 boards. Some of the Adafruit libs are used for things like the graphics library on that tiny screen he showed (Adafruit_GFX is pretty ubiquitous there, though it may have some primitives that leaked through SmartMatrix and into the HUB75/Mesmerizer code, too.) and their abstractions for I2C & SPI are used. So it's not like Adafruit hasn't left some DNA samples in the code.
Dave, Always love your projects. Long time subscriber, thanks for your content. One question I have is, is there a way to do long-range wifi (a mile or 2) reliably? Maybe several parabolic dish antennas? The reason I ask is I want to put several LED strips on Paramotors (which would be flying) and have them all synchronized for airshows. I started down a path of my own on this using LORA to send change commands with a discrete set of patterns running locally. Your solution is much more unified and allows for fully synchronized patterns between multiple strips which was something my solution could not do. I originally rejected a wifi solution due to the range limitations in my use case, but the features your solution offers have me reconsidering this.
Parabolic antennas, whilst high gain, are very directional, and that could be a problem for you.
I would suggest you look at the charts of radiation pattern for them before going down this route.
You don't want to get in a situation where you have to steer the antenna.
Popcorn ready! Play.
You Rock.
Please consider adding DMX512 (rs485) support
+ artnet or acn.
Those are two different things. EIA-485 (probably 422, actually) is an electrical specification. DMX is a signalling protocol. I know more than a little about both. If you wanted to take the data pin on a WS-2812 and split it to be a balanced phase inverted signal on 485 as a transport vehicle because you needed to run that a few hundred feet from your ESP32, you can do that today. That's up to you.
But DMX512 is more of a signalling protocol, managing full-duplex packets and layers and frames and such telling a Gobo wash or spot at address 143 to open its shutter, rotate 243 degrees, angle up 17 degrees, and shine color X. That's simply not a good fit for what NightDriverLED is. This project is about managing a ton of commodity consumer lights, not a couple of universes of commercial lighting. (And even if you did, programing them in NLD would be a bad dream.)
However, since its open source, it you'd like to add it in a way that doesn't impact the rest of the code negatively and are ready to share, I look forward to reiewing your pull request on the project when you submit it.