2021 LED Update - New Controller Options, Setting Favorites & Schedules in WLED

how's it going this is an update to this video from 2019. that's way back before cobit was even a word i went back and watched that video and it's still pretty good up until about minute 12. once i start talking about controllers you can turn that one off and watch this one instead so you ready to see what's new since 2019 good let's go [Music] to be clear everything in that video is still accurate it's just no longer the best or easiest way to do things especially when it comes to led controllers the biggest change since 2019 is the availability of dedicated led controllers that come pre-assembled and already flashed with wled ready to go so that means you can skip that whole process of getting the node mcu and flashing with wled and these new controllers have some nice features that the node mcus of the old days just didn't have ready to meet our new friends here they are these are the wonderful new pre-built controllers the digiuno and the digiquad they've got several features that make doing led projects a whole lot easier they've got screw terminals to make connections easier fuses for protection capacitors and a few resistors for just general electronic goodness they've got logic level shifters so that the data signal that comes out of here is a whole lot more appropriate for leds than what we used to get out of the bare node mcu if you're doing a pretty simple project like leds around your desk then the uno is probably the right board if you're putting leds around your house and you're gonna want multiple segments that can do different things and if you're gonna need a lot of power injection then the quad is probably the right board for you let's look at the hardware and wiring this is the uno up close power goes in on this side there's a plus here or you can also see on the other side ground goes in on this side power goes in on that side ground over here positive over here now it says here that you can put anything between 5 and 24 volts on the input side and that's true but make sure that whatever voltage you put in on the input side is what your leds are expecting on the output side if you put 12 volts or 24 volts on the input side and your leds are expecting 5 volts on the output side you will destroy your leds these boards have some circuitry that automatically changes whatever the input voltage is down to 5 volts for the control board that's this guy but it doesn't change this voltage for the leds on the output side whatever you put in here comes out on the other side to connect up the data you take the top part off and we're going to connect to these terminals here ground is at the top then we have led 1 and led 2 and positive at the bottom a little secret about the uno is it's actually a duo because it does have two led outputs that you can use all wired up it looks like this there is a jumper over here but for pretty much everybody that can be ignored each of these data terminals can send information out to about 1500 pixels or leds more than that and you may run into some lag or choppiness in the effects 1500 is a lot that should be more than enough for most people to go around the roof line of their house once it's wired up put the controller back on top and since it has wled already installed you're done how easy is that so what's different about the quad well for one more data output terminals four actually hence the name quad which has four letters so there's four outputs see how that works it also has a lot more power output terminals and fuses which is great for power injection so for your bigger projects or ones with really long runs of leds where you need to inject power the quad is a great choice there are three different types of network connections available for the uno or the quad the on-board antenna an external antenna or one with an ethernet port for maximum reliability ethernet is the way to go but since that's not always practical my personal favorite is the external antenna you get much better signal strength than with the onboard antenna but it's a lot more convenient than running an ethernet wire if your project is somewhere far away from your router the unos and the quads are the brainchild of quindor an led jedi master and they're available for sale on his website or mine there's lots more information about how to use them on the quinn led website so now it's time to get in and start controlling our leds with our fancy little digi uno i've connected it to power and some leds these are 5 volt leds so i'm using 5 volt power when you turn it on a little orange light comes on the esp32 and the digital and then the leds come on the esp32 is now broadcasting a wi-fi access point called wled ap right there you can put in the password here which is wld1234 or there's a great website full of all the information you could possibly want it's cleverly named knowledge kno dot wled dot ge very clever another way to initially connect to your digi uno with wled is to scan the qr code that will automatically fill in the password and get you connected once you're connected to the wled access point then you can go to wi-fi settings and put in your wi-fi id and password then the wled access point will disappear and to find your new device you go to the wled app hit the plus and then discover lights then the check mark and when you go back here you should have a new wled device now when i change the colors on the app changes the colors of the leds so i'm cruising once you've connected the device to the wled app you can see the ip address if you go to your browser and type in that ip address it'll take you to the controls and you can start doing fun stuff like setting presets i want to dive into a few of the things you can do with wled that i think will be most important for new users but before i do that i want to thank air cookie there have been tons of improvements to wled in the last two years and air cookie is amazing and deserves some kind of award for his contribution to the betterment of humanity if you're not on the nobel prize selection committee you can still support wled by sending a few bucks to air cookie on paypal what he's done with this project is truly fantastic and the amount of enjoyment that he has given to so many people across the world is just unmeasurable thanks man the first thing i think most people will want to do is create presets or favorites so get your leds out plug them in and start playing around with some of the colors and effects over here is a list of a bunch of palettes so these are specific color arrangements that you can use this row is all of the effects some of the effects are influenced by the color palette and some are not back on the knowledge page there is a list of all the effects and all the palettes so you can get an idea of what does what it even gives you a little preview so you can either look through this and find some effects that you think are cool or you can just start picking them and watch your leds and see what you think looks the most awesomest when you've found some settings that you like go over to this column and click create preset enter a name and then make sure use current state is checked that just means whatever the lights are currently doing is what this preset is going to do when you select it then click save preset i don't remember what the maximum number of presets is but it's more than you're ever going to need the next thing i think a lot of people want to do and don't exactly know how to do when they first start using wled is how to get the lights to turn on with a certain effect at a certain time of night and then turn off again later in the night so let me show you how to do that you go to config time and macros first make sure you're using the ntp server and set your time zone next scroll down here to the time controlled presets this is where you set what time you want the preset to start so in this case i'm going to say at 6 30 start preset number three and i want that to happen monday tuesday wednesday thursday and sunday but not friday and saturday on friday and saturday at seven o'clock i want preset number two to start so now at 6 30 preset 3 will start during these days of the week and at seven o'clock preset two will start during these days of the week so let's say that now how do you get them to turn off at a certain time back on the knowledge page under the http requests it gives you a whole fun list of commands that you can use in your presets i'm not going to get into a lot of this but i am going to use this one which just turns on or off or toggles the lights so back on wled create a new preset call it off then unclick use current state and type in capital t equals 0. save preset now we've got one that will turn them off so go back to config time and macros and down here decide what time you want the lights to go off the neighbors are usually happy if the lights are off by about 10 30. so at 10 30 i want to activate preset number four and i want that to happen every day of the week nah let's let him stay up later on friday and saturday now there isn't currently a way to set a calendar in wled that is you can't just say for all of the month of december play preset number two and for the month of july play preset number six that may come but it doesn't exist right now but what i've done is create different presets and set different timers and then just activate and deactivate the ones i want during certain seasons so for example in the summer time let's say i want my lights to come on at 8 30 and i want it to play a specific preset now what i do is deactivate this until the time of year when i want this to be my automatic preset when that time comes i'll turn off these other presets and turn on this one it's not the most elegant solution but it works now how about a little bit of help with troubleshooting i've got a couple of algorithms to try and help people logically follow a process for sorting out what's going wrong with their leds the two most common problems are the lights are either flickering or they don't come on at all either way following these two flow diagrams should help you sort through the most common issues for this last bit of advice i wanted to look in the eyes please for the love of all that is good and holy for your sanity and mine test out your entire setup on the ground before you install it on your house it will save you so much heartache and pain if there's a problem and you're fixing it on the kitchen table that's way better than being up on a ladder having already installed all this stuff and then banging your head against the wall trying to figure out why your lights don't work so please test it out before you install it got it good that's my 2021 update hope that was helpful to you if you need help or want to chat with me or others who enjoy projects like this you can find us on facebook and discord that's all for now as always thanks for watching till next time adios [Music]

Channel: DrZzs

Views: 26,272

Keywords: Home Automation, Home Assistant, Sonoff, DIY, Electronics, Tasmota, Arduino, 3d printing, Home Automation, Home Assistant, Sonoff, DIY, Electronics, Tasmota, Arduino, 3d printing, smart home, hassio, esp8266, sonoff basic, iot, nodemcu, drzzs, wemos d1, esphome, home automation, automation, tech, drzzzs, dr zzs, dr zzzs, hassos, home assistant, home assistant automation, iot home automation, tasmota, drzzs sonoff, tech hacks, technical hacks, esp32, iot automation

Id: vv79f2SShys

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021