LED strips are cool. And addressable ones are even cooler. They look great as a lighting feature and we can actually integrate them into our home automation system as well!
We can use LED strip animations for various purposes such as flashing lights for notifications (e.g. door bell), mood lighting and visual feedback for voice control (very important!).
They can be used in automations as well to give visual cues about the automation being executed.
For example, Motion lighting can be set up to dim lights before turning them off completely.
A bedtime automation turns off all power plugs to save standby power on electronic appliances. This automation could be accompanied by a red, “breathing” LED animation that fades to black.
For voice control, it would be good to give a visual cue to indicate the hotword has been detected and the voice assistant is actively listening for an instruction. This can be accomplished using a simple LED animation.
I think its easy to see the versatility of LED lights in a home automation system-and there is no denying they make a smart home look smart and futuristic.
Requirements
Hardware
- controller must be WiFi enabled
- controller must be able to control/animate the LED strip
- small form factor (to be mounted inside coffee table, out of sight)
- power supply able to supply at least 6Amps[^1]
- power supply to have over current protection and built in fuse.
Software
- integrates with Home Assistant (implying MQTT JSON Light compatibility)
- preset animation patterns
- (HA) automations that take advantage of the LED strip.
[^1]: A 5 meter, 5 volt LED strip with 5050 LEDs at full brightness consumes 6 amps of current.
Automation Examples
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Bedtime | (described in Motivation section) A red breathing LED animation which fades to black indicates that the automation is executing. There is no practical purpose for this other than it looks cool. |
| Coming Home | LED strip plays animation, as a “welcome home”. This indicates the house is aware of my coming home. If it is too dark in the room to see the LED strip is lit up and used as a light source. |
| Doorbell pressed | LED strip plays short animation as a visual cue to the verbal announcement through test-to-speech. |
| Watching TV | LED strip color fades from bright white to dimmed white for mood lighting. Pausing the movie causes the LED strip to go up in brightness a little to create more light. |
| Nighttime | When motion is detected in the living at light time, the LED strip is turned on in a red color. Red is easy on the eyes at night. (white or blue light is harsh on the eyes) |
| Party mode | LED strip plays various animations synced to the beat of the music. I have admittedly no idea how I am going to sync it to the beat. Most animations are periodic in nature anyway, but the task of detecting beats and syncing to it will prove a challenge. |
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High Level Instructions
Building this project can be broken up into a number of subtasks.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Purchase a NodeMCU and the LED strip | If you don’t have a spare NodeMCU laying around. |
| Flash the Arduino firmware onto a test board | Flash the firmware and confirm it connects to your Wifi and responds to MQTT messages using MQTTfx and the serial console. |
| Order all components on Ebay and AliExpress | Doesn’t hurt to get some spares. Electronic components are cheap. |
| Design electronic circuit in graphics program | Download mine to save time. While you’re waiting for compoennts you can do some other tasks. |
| Integrate with Home Assistant | You can start integrating the controller with Home Assistant. Use the serial console to confirm communication works and the effects are applied. |
| Etch PCB board | Etch the electronic circuit using the etching kit. |
| Setup a test circuit using breadboard and jumper wires | This serves as a proof of concept, easier to debug a circuit or the software before soldering to final PCB board. |
| Mount LED channels | Use 3M double sided tape to mount the LED channels in the desired location. |
| Drill holes and solder components to board | Make sure you solder components in the correct orientation and on the correct side of the PCB. Some components go on top and others are soldered from the bottom. This is it make the baord as small as possible. |
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This is not supposed to be a detailed tutorial. Some knowledge is assumed. My project pages are meant to serve as inspiration, giving you the ideas and tools to replicate similar set ups customized to your requirements. I strive to make all software resources available to you.
PCB Etching, Assembly and Soldering
Mounting the LED strips
Here are some photos of attaching the LED strips to the underside of the table using aluminium LED profiles.