ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:12 am #92171 Hello all,
I am new here, and looking for advice/recommendations as to what hardware to use for an upcoming project....

Project
The project is for some outside features/sculptures which require lighting.

• Each of the features are approx 20m apart from one another, and will require up to 5m of addressable LED tape/rope on each one (most likely WS2812b tape).
• We would like to be able to control the light (colour, intensity patterns etc) from a central "controller" which the individual fixtures connect back to (ideally via WiFi).
• There will likely be 10 of these features initially, but may expand to more at a later date.

Current thoughts...

• 12v power will be supplied to the LED tape by a power supply in each features base.
• My initial thought was to use an Arduino at each fixture, directly connected to the 5m of LED tape to control the lighting effects.
• Weather an ESP8266 NodeMCU would be a more efficient option.
• After a lot of Googling, I am aware there is an an ESP-01 available, which might fit the bill perhaps as I found a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKl5vnxCVcc of these working?
• I'd likely need some differing power supply options to run both the 12v LED and the controller
• I've seen it mentioned that the storage on NodeMCU or ESP-01 may not be enough to store many LED sequences?
• Use the Arduino IDE where possible

Options?

• Is it feasible to have an ESP-01 at each feature (node)?
• And then have these ESP-01 connect via WiFi to a central controller that can push the LED sequences to the individual fixtures in varying formats (eg all features turn one colour, or have colours sequence around the features).
• Perhaps an Arduino or RaspberryPI would be suitable for the controller part (which will likely require more storage and RAM).
• WiFi could either be direct (from the nodes to the controller) or via a separate WiFi AccessPoint (I'd use Unifi kit).

I have been unable to locate anyone with a similar type of setup online, which is making me think I am going down completely the wrong route. .... Hence the forum post here.....

Any thoughts greatly appreciated
James

- Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:52 pm #92175

I am aware there is an an ESP-01 available

What ever you do DO NOT use the ESP-01, only grief lies on that path!
Use a sensible device such as the NodeMCU or the Wemos D1 mini.

- Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:23 am #92178 There are smaller MCU's with less pins available if you want to save space.

- Wed Sep 01, 2021 3:31 am #92179 From the software perspective I would do it all on one esp8266 per lighting install avoiding the complication of multiple processors. Memory won't be a problem for controlling medium length strings. If you want to have a library of custom sequences these can be stored in filing system in flash and loaded as needed.

Check out McLighting as a starting point for the software.

https://github.com/toblum/McLighting