WiFi-LED-XMAS-tree

From The Munich Maker Lab's Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
           
WiFi LED XMAS tree

Release status: beta [box doku]

WiFi LED XMAS tree.jpg
Description Pimp an ordinary LED christmas tree and make it controllable via wifi
Author(s)  Uli, Rene, Marijn, German (Uli)
Last Version  0.9.1 (03.12.2018)
Platform  WEMOS D1 mini
License  MIT
Download  https://github.com/munichmakerlab/wifi-led-xmas-tree


Introduction

This project is about a WiFi LED XMAS tree consisting of an ordinary electronics gadget LED christmas tree with a pimped top LED and connected to a WEMOS D1 mini to enable WiFi control.

The hardware

  • ordinary LED christmas tree (such as this one from Ali Express [1])
  • pimped multi color controllable LED (we used the WS2812B on a small round white circuit board such as one of these [2])
  • WEMOS D1 mini based on the ESP8266 (such as this one [3])
  • Some additional resitors (about 150 Ohms) because the ones delivered with the ordinary tree are way to big which results in in very dim LEDs
  • Some wire to power the tree with 5V and connect the control wires for the top LED (WS2812B controlled with serial protocol of FastLED) and the transistors which control the outer color LEDs (with pulse width modulation (PWM) of the D1)

Circuit Diagram

Socket

The tree can stand on wooden socket box (60mm x 60mm x 40mm, 3mm wooden board fitted in laser cutter) where the cables and WEMOS D1 mini can be put inside. Therefore the box has a slot on top where the wiring can be put through, an opening at the front side where a small OLED display can be placed and at the back side a small cut-out for a micro-USB cable to power the D1 and flash the software. A dxf file can be found here.

The code

So far we programmed basic animation for the LEDs and a little webserver to accept commands for turning on and off seperate LED colors.

Find it in on GitHub in our Group

History (reverse order => latest on top)

  • created a circuit diagram
  • designed and lasered a wooden socket
  • organized a workshop with German
  • ordered 8 new trees, two are already promised to Tobi
  • To make the basic LED animation more smooth, lately we programmed a Chen attractor function but did not finish it properly yet.

Want one for yourself?

  • if you can spare roughly 5€ ask me - I just ordered some replenishment trees that should arrive in a couple of days

Todo

  • Socket for the tree
    • maybe with a display to directly find out about the DNS name and/or IP address

List of known bugs & Feature requests

For more information on that, have a look at the github page of the project [4]