How to Easily Control Addressable LEDs with an ESP32 or ESP8266 | WLED Project

hey gang tim here at crow electronics and we are setting up fully addressable leds controllable through wi-fi and our phone using an esp32 development board all possible by wled [Music] this app works with absolutely any esp32 or esp8622 wi-fi boards link in the description for an article comparing these two low-power low-cost power cyclable wi-fi chips and you can control many many of these wi-fi boards simultaneously all through this single open source application wled can be found for free both in the google play store or in the ios app store so no matter your smartphone of choice you can get in on the action on the table is everything you need to get started with this any esp32 or esp8266 development board is going to work there is an abundance of these boards that you can use here i have an esp32 thing plus c you're going to be controlling this either through a computer or via a smartphone so you're going to want one of those as well you're also going to want a usb cord so that way we can put power into the system and some fully addressable leds depending on how many leds you may want to use you may want to have a secondary 5v power supply for the led strip so that way there is enough current available to each of the leds so let's jump into a computer and get started we're going to start by installing the software to our chosen little dev board wled has a website that will do all the hard work for us you're going to need to use desktop chrome or edge as these are the only browsers currently supported and type and enter directly into it the following install.wld.me it will then open up to a page like so at this point let's connect our esp32 board to the computer using any usb port make sure it's connected correctly and appears in the com port list of devices if it does not appear check the troubleshooting section on the written article with that done click on the install button using the most up-to-date version and select your correct com port the installation process should then occur and it should take less than five minutes at this stage we've not provided the esp32 with any local wi-fi details but it has provided me this configure wi-fi option so let's go through it right now and give it those wi-fi details from here everything can now be done via the wled app give your esp32 a hard reset again by pulling power from it and plugging it back in then reconnect your phone or your computer if you're using it via your computer to your desired wi-fi having done this and after a couple of seconds you should now be able to see wled as a device that has connected to your internet system when you first open up the wled app it will look empty click on the plus symbol to open up the discovery page press start discovery which will search through all of your wi-fi for all the boards running wled software once it says found wled press the tick button on the top right this is going to bring you back to the home page where you will have a list of all the wled boards on your network from here by clicking anywhere on the header you're going to be able to open up a phenomenal light setting section of this app now if your esp32 board or esp8266 board has an on-board addressable led used as a multi-status led like the board i'm using right here you're going to be able to control it directly using this setup as i change the color selected by pressing on the color wheel it changes the multi status led to match so one led is pretty cool that must mean 30 leds is at least 30 times cooler there's no law of diminishing marginal excitement at play here to do this we must then connect the esp32 to the addressable leds just like the schematic the black wire is ground the red wire is positive and the green wire is the data pin easiest way to get this connection for this particular board was by soldering headers to the board and then adding dupont connectors to the end of the strip having done so and with power to the system you should be getting light through your attached leds if you haven't jump into the app real quick double check by pressing the power button turn up the brightness slider all the way click on the config setting and double check that your data pin is selected as number four also while you're here write down the amount of leds you have connected as it will make the effects look better and butterboom we have remotely activated fully operational fully addressable leds having achieved this we can get right onto exploring what is on offer with the wled software so let's have a quick look at this user interface we have a simple power button that will turn the lights on or off but not the esp32 board we have a timer button so we can organize and schedule when we want to see the leds come on and off we have a sync button which means other lights in our network will have the same kind of light effects be occurring there is also an info button giving us details about the board and setup below this is a general brightness slider below this is the color wheel including a contrast and color tweak bars and the ability to select multiple different colors that is for use with the effects and segments clicking on the effects button at the bottom will take you to a new deeper page with an awesome and long list of effects that can all be customized from speed intensity and colors clicking on the segments button will open up a new deeper page allowing you to decide exactly what parts of your led strip are going to be lit up and which parts are not from here on out my recommendation to you is to explore the expansive lighting options this is the most fun part after all just check out this crazy custom light show i created this in less than a minute by adding two segments which splits the led strip in half i then chose three custom colors for each of these two segments and then i chose two different effects for both in my case the two effects i chose were glitter and breathe replicating this exact pattern would be significantly harder to code from first principles than it is just to use this brilliant map this is what i really want you to take away from this and it's not just strips that will work with wled any neopixel or glowbit module is literally plug and play as an example here i've set up this 8x8 glowbit matrix by plugging in exactly like before the esp32 board and have set it up in the application to have eight unique segments which each represent a single line on this display then i added this interesting rainbow colors effect to each of them so with this fantastic system operational it's now up to you to experiment to your heart's content if you want any help on any project come pop our amazing team a message on our core electronics forum we are full-time makers and here to help and with that until next time [Applause]

Channel: Core Electronics

Views: 258,798

Keywords: How to set up Internet of things LED Lights, Best way to set up Adressable LEDs Strip Wifi, Use phone to control lights, ESP32 Board first project, fun way to get started with ESP32, ESP8266, ESP8622, How to connect WLED to my network, Method to install WLED, How to get WIFI connectivity to WLED, Create Custom LED Lightshow Really Easy, No Code Solution to LED control, ESP32 Dev Board Project, GlowBit Modules, NeoPixel, Best way ever to control amazing blinky lights, 2022

Id: GYxctjukehY

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022