Building DIY LED light strip applications for you

Over the past five years, I’ve experienced all kinds of remote work arrangements. From bedroom setups to the couch or dining room table, I’ve done it all. But when I recently began to rebuild my home office, I knew that good lighting and adequate lighting were essential. This was especially important because, despite having large windows in my apartment, there wasn’t enough natural light. I know from personal experience that lighting can affect mood, productivity, and mental health.

However, as a smart home enthusiast, I’m not content with just a few lamps. Sure, I want great lighting, but I also want to build intelligence into my lighting fixtures. I want the lights to turn on automatically as soon as I walk into the room. Someone’s at the front door? I want my DIY linear lights to twinkle. Throwing a party? Boost the RGB fade effect. You get what I mean. Now, there are a lot of smart features you can do with the Philips Hue lights, but the problem is, the system is very expensive to buy.

I’m not going to let expensive Hue strips get in the way of my smart lighting plans.

For the number of meters of LED strips I needed to achieve my goal, I would have needed to take out a sizable loan if I purchased the Hue platform. Of course, an expensive lamp wasn’t going to get in the way of my hopes and dreams. Like any self-respecting tinkerer, I knew the answer. It was time to get out the soldering iron and DIY build my own smart LED lamp.

The design of the Smart LED Strip is very simple. It uses a combination of LED diodes, a controller board, and a power supply. Individually addressable LED strips allow you to get the same effects as Hue lights because each of their dots can be controlled individually. In fact, you can think of them as individual pixels in a long chain. It is possible to change the color or control the state of each individual LED on the strip. Moreover, you can mix and match them to generate all kinds of interesting effects that you need.

For my purpose, I chose a combination of 592113070242 ($9) and 684240826461($7) strips for my desk and ambient lighting. The only functional difference between the two is that the former adds an extra white diode for better control over white lighting.

Set up your own system and let you integrate many lights into the home automation platform, making it easy to play DIY.

Once you’ve sorted your LED light strips, the next step is to choose a controller. Sure, it’s possible to get Wi-Fi-based controller boards from Amazon, but if you’re building something, you might as well go all-in. Pre-built controller boards may come with their own apps, and they may come with a remote, but they lack the versatility of plugging into an existing system. Building your own controller also means you can sync multiple light strips to match setups, bridge the lights into your home automation software, and add more features over time. It’s the obvious route.

Since my project is based on the open source WLED software, I chose a cheap chip based on the ESP8266-based Node MCU. This $8 board is Wi-Fi-enabled, powers up via micro USB, and has enough smarts to control nearly a thousand LEDs. That’s more than enough for my needs.

Installing the software onto the controller couldn’t be easier. Just connect the Node MCU to your computer via USB, head to the WLED website, select the board, and click install. Once installed, the board will even create its own access point that pairs with your home Wi-Fi network.

From there, getting the board connected to my LED strip was a straightforward matter of connecting three cables. One for positive, another for negative, and a third for the actual data connection between the controller and the LEDs. I tossed in an external power supply as well since my bookcase had close to 500 LEDs.

That’s it. For a total cost of approximately $50, i.e. less than a single 2m long Philips Hue strip, I was able to make my own Wi-Fi controllable RGB lights. Between my bookcase and the task light above my desk, I’ve got a total of 14m of lighting, something that would have cost me close to $700 had I opted for the Hue ecosystem.

Not only can these lights be controlled over Wi-Fi, but they also come with an app, and when paired with an Alexa-based speaker, they appear as LED light strips. More importantly for me, however, these lights integrate perfectly into my Home Assistant installation. I can build any automation I have in mind and tie it to any light on my network.

Next article, detailed description: How I use Home Assistant to integrate my smart home

I’ve built an automation system that takes motion detection input from the camera above my front door to turn on the lights in my den. Furthermore, this system is infinitely expandable using any other additions I may make in the future. It’s this simplicity and expandability that is the real selling point of applying a DIY approach to any electronics product, including smart light strips.

My DIY smart lighting system is infinitely expandable to include any other features I might add in the future.

I understand the appeal of buying into the Hue ecosystem. The company has invested heavily in building a massive portfolio of switches, toggles, and accessories that work with the lights. However, DIY RGB lights built on the WLED project can do all of that and more when combined with Home Assistant. The software comes with over 100 different built-in light scenes that go far beyond simple brightness and color control. Turn on the lights with Home Assistant to control any device that can plug into the home automation software. Of course, this also applies to all Zigbee-based products, including those sold with the Hue badge. For example, my motion detection automation is taking input from a Ubiquiti Protect camera. That wouldn’t be possible with Hue lights.

In the end, I understand that the DIY approach can be daunting. But the sheer number of files available on the internet makes it a challenge. Not only can you save a little money by going the DIY route, but it’s a great learning experience for a fun weekend project. As for me, I’m already installing RGB lights.