trisweb
Ben@VersionBen6999 Nice! Would love to see it when it's built out.
@trisweb have to solder the controller, I believe. Will be my first time in ages! But I think I can make at least one, and go from there. Will let you know!!
@trisweb follow up. I finally pulled all the pieces I had out, and grabbed the soldering iron ... and then looked at the resource ( https://github.com/srg74/Controller-for-WLED-firmware ) ... and realized that his "material used" must be missing several components because what I've got looks NOTHING like what he's got there. So annoyed/frustrated.
Looks like I'm going to be looking for another controller, one I can power by USB.
At least I've got the kno.wled.ge website bookmarked.
GitHub - srg74/Controller-for-WLED-firmware: Wi-Fi controller based on ESP-07S module with external antenna for WLED firmware.
Wi-Fi controller based on ESP-07S module with external antenna for WLED firmware. - GitHub - srg74/Controller-for-WLED-firmware: Wi-Fi controller based on ESP-07S module with external antenna for W...
@VersionBen6999 ah! Best laid plans…
Can I help at all? WLED is pretty flexible, you might have what you need. Feel free to shoot me a pic of what you’ve got and let’s see.
@trisweb from what I can tell, I've got NOTHING needed to actually go on the board, which is just...an astronomically bad exclusion from their materials list. I'm thinking about going with https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-high-power-led-strip-controller but I'd still need to figure out how to swap the power to USB. I've seen some controllers (not WLED) that appear to be 5V to USB but...
Then there's a matter of how many of those devices I'd need to power about 300 lights. (6x strands of 50).
Sigh.
@VersionBen6999 for that many strings, I’d do a 12V power supply, outdoor rated to around 100W. You won’t be able to power that many through USB. That controller should work fine with that kind of power supply, and it should pass through the power and power itself fine.
What’s your thinking behind making it USB?
For reference, the way mine works is pretty simple—they’re 12v WS2811 strings, and I have a 150W waterproof power brick, ESP8266 board with WLED installed in between in a box.
@trisweb I have no outdoor plug where I'd like to put them. And I'm not keen on the energy loss of trying to run a plug through a window to supply power from inside, unless I could find a micro-cord (like I did for an ethernet cable) that would have a minimal effect on the window. Does such a thing even exist?
@VersionBen6999 totally can! For a short run to bridge the window you could use something like this: https://a.co/d/4pieAnO - you might want to do two in parallel to handle the current of 6 strings.
That’s nice too, because then you can use a non-waterproof power supply indoors.
But yeah I’m not sure how you’ll get power to them if not from a power supply. Solar with a battery?
@trisweb That had sorta been my intent - I had picked up 2 solar powered battery packs (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PBQJ4WB). Though perhaps I'd need to snag a 3rd, and figure out a way to daisychain them to all supply power together?
Got to love condo living! Nothing is easy!
@VersionBen6999 hey that’s actually pretty cool. I bet you could figure it out.
I’d try three strips of 5V addressable LEDs per pack, and my main concern would be the solar not recharging them fast enough. I’m super curious how long they’d run (especially if just for 4ish hours after dark?) and if it does keep up.
Don’t let me discourage you, keep at it! You’ve got the right idea.
As for getting 5V from the USB, easy. Just take the red and black wire from any cut USB cable.
@trisweb Update! My Amazon order day (I try to limit my ordering to the 15/30th of the month) finally arrived, so I ordered 15ft USB cables, electrical tape, and two waterproof "cord" containers for the controllers. They'll arrive tomorrow. Controller should as well (via USPS). So assembly should begin tomorrow as well. I'll document with pictures.
@trisweb Doh! I forgot about the holiday today. So no USPS delivery (read: no controllers). But Amazon will deliver!
@trisweb Looks like USB power isn't going to work. Did the wiring, looking over charts to make sure I was doing it properly (the power side has VCC & GND ports), so red + white. Isolated those from the USB cord, and threaded those into the controller. Electrical taped the hell out of the unused portion. Plugged the other end of the cable into my battery bank and turned it on...nothing. It should have been broadcasting an SSID for my phone to see. Nope.
Back to the drawing board!
@trisweb So I'm an idiot. I checked with my electrician (he was over here today doing another job for me) and he was all "no, not white, black" ... I undid the tape, stripped the black, fed it in, and powered it up - success! So next set is to feed the lights cabling in, and see if I have sufficient power to light those bad boys up.
@trisweb Good news - lights power up! Bad news - they won't change color.
Siiiiiiiiigh.
@VersionBen6999 my bad if I led you astray on the wire colors! Glad you figured it out. If they power up that’s a great start, I’m sure you can keep playing with the controller to get the data line working.
@trisweb the power supplies I picked up can put out up to 15000 mA, which should be MORE than sufficient, I'd think, especially if I'm running 3 strands to each power supply. And the output of those power supplies is 5V, which is what the lights call for. So I *should* be good? We'll see come Friday!
@trisweb had another thought - what if I borked the controller but using the wrong wires? Since I have another set, going to try those shortly and see if I get better results!
@VersionBen6999 yep that should work as power supply goes! You likely won’t have broken anything with the wrong wires, it needs a full circuit to make electricity flow, and anyway 5V isn’t going to blow up anything. Worth trying though!
@trisweb Looks like I DID fry the controller.
This is with the second controller, wired properly from the start. I don't have the fully array of colors, but they DO change.
So I'm thinking with the more powerful power supplies, that'll give me alllll of the colors!
@VersionBen6999 try the settings for RGB order in WLED! You can set various orders, try to find the one that matches your string. Could be BGR.
@trisweb I don't even know at this point. this controller seems to have issues as well - it kept rapidly flipping on and off. now the lights aren't powering, though the controller is getting power, which in theory means the lights should be too.
@trisweb I've sent an email to Athom. Given some of the reviews on Amazon (and that it's Chinese New Year) I may not hear from them for awhile. For the sake of argument, I picked up 2 identical Athom controllers from Amazon - at least if those don't work, I can send them back to Amazon!
@trisweb so the power supplies plus wire adapters arrived and I got them set up and working. Only problem: HA decided it wasn't going to acknowledge them.
Solution I read was to backup the presets and do a factory reset. Eventually get them on the network again and HA immediately finds them...
... And they won't light up. I've checked all the connections, tried both sets of lights. No joy.
Think I wait until tomorrow when the new controllers arrive.
Siiiiigh.
@trisweb IT GETS BETTER. 🙄
The new controllers arrived and they're the WRONG ones. Already opened a return on Amazon, I'll end up at a UPS store sometime tomorrow to drop them off.
After reading less than stellar things about the durability of the Athom controllers, I decided to spin in a different direction and get a Quin-LED Dig-Uno ... I would have picked up 2, but they only had one left in stock. Maybe I'll be able to power all 6 strands with one good controller? But the wait continues.
@VersionBen6999 Ahh what a pain! Sorry to hear that. If you have a capable power supply, the controller should be able to handle many strings, as it just passes through the power rather than handling all of it. The main bottleneck is the processing power of the controller, but that just affects your frame rate. Good luck!
@trisweb It seems like that controller SHOULD be able to handle it, based on what I was reading but...we'll see? I thought I had it yesterday, when I had lights moving and dancing and then when they didn't connect to HA, it all went downhill from there. As with before, I will circle back, and hopefully the next time, it'll be with video of everything up and going!
@trisweb I have returned to poke you! The QuinLED-Dig-Uno arrived, was super easy to setup (though I DID need to salvage the wire to lights piece from the Athom units) and bring online. Imported my previously saved presets, plugged an outdoor plug in, fed it through the window (siiiiigh) got stuff situated in the waterproof box (adapter + controller) and strung 3 strands of lights.
When it's darker out, I'll grab some videos. 😀
@VersionBen6999 Wooo! Nice. Congrats on getting it hooked up. Hope I was helpful in being a rubber duck to talk to 😄
@trisweb Very much so. You encouraged me to try my USB idea, and then kept encouraging me throughout. I'm waiting on an identical controller (unfortunately, from China, I bought the last one in stock from the US Shop) for the other 3 strands of lights. But with the presets already saved, it'll be easy to import and get going quickly.
And since the plug/extension cord is already outside, all I'll need to do is bring the second waterproof box out and put everything in it and string lights!
@trisweb Here's video of the different playsets in action, on the bush I had enough lights for.
@VersionBen6999 yeah!! It’s alive! Great work, looking good.
@trisweb I need to tweak my Home Assistant trigger or the calendar itself...(I stupidly made the "holidays" all day events!) but the lights are on right now. Red/Pink/White for Valentines Day!