Bookshelf lighting

I am out of town until Tuesday next week.


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No rush. excited to make it work as I think the Arduino holds a key to a few fun projects

I have not done anything w arduino/esp for some years. I am now fully on raspberry pi.

I have 15+ raspberries and communication w sensors and switches etc goes through Bluetooth from each rpi


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Probably not the right place to post this but is Arduino yesterday and raspberries the future.? Looking for small, low power boards that can do things like: act as a wireless connection for speakers, connecting landscape lights (color) to indigo, led candles that light up on a schedule. I’ve heard a lot about raspberries and I’m not too far down the path to switch gears. And…is indigo integration easier with raspberries? Thanks and no rush.

I occasionally play with Raspberry Pi boards. Nothing serious. But I do have one set up as a wireless connection for a pair of powered speakers. It's very easily done.

@jalves I'm interested in what you have done with your remote speakers. Is there a thread you created I could read through?

It's very simple. Run these two commands on your Raspberry Pi

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install shairport-sync -y


Once run and the Pi rebooted you can use any speakers plugged into the Pi as an AirPlay device.

Probably not the right place to post this but is Arduino yesterday and raspberries the future.? Looking for small, low power boards that can do things like: act as a wireless connection for speakers, connecting landscape lights (color) to indigo, led candles that light up on a schedule. I’ve heard a lot about raspberries and I’m not too far down the path to switch gears. And…is indigo integration easier with raspberries? Thanks and no rush.

For lighting, with fancy effects, ie different colours across the strip (otherwise why do you need a low power board) I’d say going esp route (not arduino) and using wled is the cheapest and best approach with indigo able to trigger effects but you set up externally.

The Hook Up has a lot of videos you should watch, as does Dr Zzzs https://youtu.be/vv79f2SShys

It’s mainly around Xmas lights but with led strips you can do same inside for bookshelves etc.

I’d watch a bunch of both their videos, sure one has projects using wled for bedside lights.

If you just want simple colour strips a zigbee or zwave led strip controller is all you need.

Arduino (especially the smaller ones) and the esp boards above are much simpler than a pi and do different jobs. As they are simpler less can go wrong in theory.

Holy cow!
I haven't been on the forum as frequently for a bit but it was really great to see this! I will now try to wrap my head around the question and give you my best answer!

Oh, and to respond to your other question- arduinos and raspi's overlap in some functionality but they each do their own thing really well. I'll try to find a YT episode of Dronebot Workshop that really explains their relative merits.

(I like esp32's because i control propane tanks with them, uh, it's art or something)

@mundmc

Great to see your response!

I've been reading a bit more on raspi's. @mundc @siclark I have a few use cases (a bit of cross posting to another thread I have) for me I see two categories of my projects: battery/low power OR powered .

My bookshelf lighting project would be powered, while my 12v AC powered airplay speaker would be low powered, then LED candle would be battery. I see low and battery as Arduino and raspi as
powered...maybe not exclusively but that is what my thinking is (now) . Is that a good assumption?

For all my use cases I would like to drive it all from Indigo. Bookshelf lighting is the most straight forward for Indigo but I got side-tracked with the Candle (short attention span?). Creating the flickering LED candle, figuring out the battery power and how long it lasts seemed fun. Sorry to make the thread confusing but @mundmc got me hooked on Arduino (smile) and I'm out to create a left handed smoke shifter (finally). The short term is connecting my Arduino to Indigo.

Thanks all for your help!

Lololol you are too kind, now let's focus up!

Confirming:
1. Have you used the WLED app on your phone or browser to confirm WLED is successfully flashed onto the esp?
2. Have you installed the indigo plug-in, "WLED"?

If yes to both one and two, take it from there and give me more info, we're going to get you through this, remember your breathing!

Ah, [mention]jroach [/mention] when you said arduino above did you mean nodemcu/esp boards? They are different things and yes using wled it’s very easy to control a nodemcu board from indigo as they have built in wifi. Arduino boards don’t necessarily.
I was confused as to why you were using arduino for lighting

@siclark I'm still confused on the nomencalture of the boards. I have a Wemos D1 mini and its wifi and its an esp8266. I just thought all of these boards were Arduino. I'm excited that the WLED plugin holds the answer. Thanks!

@mundmc

I have not either WLED on the phone or the plugin but I know what I am doing as soon as I get home:)

Thanks!

I'll report back

@mundmc

good advice gets good results:)

Downloaded WLED onto my board, connected to indigo, it works! THANKS!
I did try and make it more difficult though and tried using the source code vs the quick way as I want to add some user mods I saw (for the Candle project.)

Speaking of... I saw that you commented on my candle thread so I'll use that one to pick your brain about battery, RTC, and if I can use WLED.