In this video I'm going to install outdoor lighting using WS2812B LED
strip and WLED. Make sure you stick around, and if you like what you see, make
sure you hit subscribe below so you don't miss out on future videos.
Hi I'm Will from Will Surridge Tech, and in this video we're going to be installing
some outdoor lighting into my garden. We're going to use some WS2812B
digital LED strip and a Wemos D1 Mini as we did in my last LED strip
video. But this time we're going to be using WLED instead of ESPHome. If you
stick around until the end I'm going to show you my favourite effect in WLED. So
to do this we're going to need: some WS2812B LED strip, a suitable power
supply, a Wemos D1 Mini to control it, some wire to link it all
together, a logic shifter, a soldering iron, and a glue gun. If you want to make
it look pretty then you're also going to want to get some aluminium extrusion. So
starting with the LED strip. I covered a bit more about the theory of LED strips in
my other video but basically the WS2812B is a digital LED strip. That means it's
got a micro controller inside each LED pixel. This means you can control each
pixel individually and that enables you to run effects down the line. The strips
come in different pixel densities and waterproof levels. The fewer pixels you
have the cheaper it's going to be and the less power you're going to need to
run it; but the more pixels you have the more continuous your effects are going
to look which were much nicer. In this example I'm going to use 30 pixels per
meter, whereas for my indoor LED strip I use 60 pixels per meter. As for
waterproofing, there are three different levels of waterproofing that the strip
can come in. You can either get it in no waterproofing at all like I had for my
indoor strip, or you can get it with a silicon coating across the strip this is
IP65 rated, or you can get it in IP67 rated so the whole LED strip is inside a
silicon tube. Remember if you cut the LED strip at any point you're going to need
to reseal it so you can use some hot glue or heat shrink to do this. I'm going
to use IP65 rated LED strip as it's going to be inside the aluminium
extrusion so it shouldn't get affected by the rain that much. It's also not
going to be submerged. As for the power supply, as I mentioned in my last video
you're going to need 0.18 Watts per LED pixel, and I've got six meters of
LED strip, at 30 pixels per meter, that means I going to need 35 watts of power.
At 5V that equates to 7A. If your power supply isn't beefy enough to
supply the power to your LED strip you can always limit the current draw in the
WLED software later on. There are three main types of power supply you can get
for low voltage. You either have one with a transformer built into the plug like
your phone charger, these generally go up to about 4 amps; or you have ones with a
separate transformer a bit like a laptop charger, these can go up to about 8 amps;
or you have the ones like I'm using today which is just a metal casing with
screw terminals for the input and the output, these can go up to a whopping 60
amps. But these do require you to why the power yourself so if you're not
comfortable playing with mains voltages then I suggest you use the other form
instead. I don't want my LED strip to be a permanent installation so I'm going to
cut my LED strip every meter and stick it inside an individual bit of aluminium
channel. I'm then going to add connections to each of the ends of the
LED strip so I can join them all together when it's in place. If you're
making a permanent installation then I suggest leaving the LED strip in one
long length - the fewer connections you have to make the less likely things are
to go wrong, but if you do have to make a connection you can just solder between
the two pads at the end of each LED strip rather than adding crimp
connections like I'm doing. As for power injection, this depends on how long
your runs going to be and how thick the cable is you're going to be using. I'm
going to inject every two meters because I'm using quite thin cable. Because of
the way I cut my LED strip I can use the pre-made injection wires every two
meters that are directly attached to the LED strip but if you can't do this then
you can solder directly onto the pads instead. Once we're happy with all our
connectors we can move on to making the circuit board for our controller. I'm
going to make my circuit on a bit of strip board but you can make yours in a
breadboard or even just using jumper wires if you prefer for this we're going
to your Wemos D1 mini and our logic shifter with header pins attached. We're
going to get the 5 volts from our power supply and we want to connect the 5 volt
line to the 5 volts on our Wemos D1 Mini and the high voltage on our logic
shifter. We want to connect the ground to the
ground on the D1 Mini and the ground on both sides of the logic shifter. We're
going to connect 3.3 volts from our Wemos D1 Mini to the low voltage side of
our logic shifter. Then we're going to connect D4 to one of our low voltage
data inputs on the logic shifter. The high voltage data output is going to go
straight to our LED strip. I'm going to use male header pins for my power input
and my data output on this strip board. This means I can connect my power supply
and my LED strip just using some header pins. I'm also going to use some female
header pins for attaching my d1 mini this means that I can swap it out later
on if I need to. Obviously if you're using strip board you're going to
need to make sure you cut out any of the connections you don't want to exist
anymore - so between both sides of the d1 mini and between the high and low
voltage side of the logic shifter, the ground however you can let run through.
Once you're happy with all your connections you can use a multimeter to
test them out and make sure all the connections are going where they're
meant to go and you haven't got any shorts with anywhere else. Now we can
move on to the software. We're going to need to plug our D1 Mini into our
computer using a micro USB cable. We can then head over to the WLED github page,
go over to the wiki, find the binaries and download the latest binary for the
ESP8266 micro controller. If you're using a different chip you may need to use a
different binary here. Next we open up the ESPHome-Flasher app, we find the
right serial port, select the binary from our downloads and press flash. Once
that's done we can go and set it up now we can connect to the WLED AP Wi-Fi
network. This should automatically bring up a pop-up window, but if it doesn't you
can just go to your web browser and go to 4.3.2.1 Once here you can
enter the SSID and password for your Wi-Fi, you can add a static IP address
and Gateway if you need to, and you can add a local address. This is where you
can find your controller later on. Once you're happy click Save and return to
your normal Wi-Fi. Once here you should be able to go to your local address that
you just set or the IP address of your new device and you should be able to
find the instance. I would suggest you plug all your LEDs
in now to test them out - it's definitely worth testing them out before you fix
them in place. I'll do a quick overview of the interface here but if you want to
see more detail, then you should check out Dr Zzz's video. In settings the first
setting we have is the Wi-Fi settings. You can just ignore these because you've
already done them, unless of course you need to change something. Next we have
the LED settings - this is where you input the number of LEDs you have in your
strip, and this is where you can also input a maximum current. The rest of the
settings should be fine as they are, but if you find all your colours are wrong,
for example you click on green and it comes out red, then you can change the
order of your LEDs here. Next we have user interfaces, that's not really
anything useful. Now we have sync, this is useful. If you have a large setup where
you're using lots of different micro controllers to control your LED
strip then you can sync them all together so they all interact with each
other. You can also use sync to use Art-net or sACN DMX protocols to control
your lights. This might be useful if you wanted to use another network based
interface such as X lights. We can also add Amazon Echo, Blink, MQTT and Hue to our
WLED setup. I've never done it myself but if you'd like to see me do it in another
video let me know in the comments below. under the time settings we want to make
sure we check get time from ntp server here so our time is correct.
We can also add macros - macros is a great way of getting lots of things done at a
certain time or in a certain way. Under security we can also enable over-the-air
update to our WLED setup now back to the main interface. If we enable PC mode
we can see all four editing control panels in one wide window. The first section
is colour. In here you can select your own colours, create your own three coulor
palette, or you can select a colour palette that's been pre-made by other
people. Next we have effects. There is a list of
all the effects on the WLED github page, but equally you can just try them out
for yourself. At the top we can change the effect intensity and speed.
Next we have segments, this is useful if you want to split your LED strip up. For
example I've got my LED strip in two sides of the garden, so I'm going to have
one side of the garden on one segment, and the other side in another segment.
This means you can control them individually or together. Lastly we
have palettes and presets. This is where you can save your views if you want to.
You can only use slot 16 if you want to save multiple segments, so I'd suggest
once you've got your segment set up with the correct numbers of LEDs you save it
in slot 16. I would also suggest you go into your settings and recall slot 16 on
boot. That means that if you restart your WLED instance then slot 16 will
automatically boot up so all your segments will be recalled. Once you're
happy that your WLED setup is all complete and all your LEDs are
functioning correctly we can go and install them; but before you do that I'd
recommend adding a dab of hot glue under each new connection that you've made
this will re-waterproof them. If you're using aluminium channel I would also
recommend adding a dab of hot glue under the LED strip wherever you've made a cut
this means you can't accidentally short any of your connections with the metal
channel itself. Now we can go outside install them. Because I know my setup is
temporary I'm just laying my channels on the floor and connecting them up, but if
you're making a permanent installation I'd highly recommend using the fixings
that come with your aluminium channel to mount them to a surface. You'll probably
want to make your cable management a little better than mine, and you also
probably don't want to have your cables coming out of your window but that's all I
can do. Once we're happy we can plug it in and test it out. Now let's integrate
it into Home Assistant. There is actually a built-in integration for WLED so if
you go into your integrations it should automatically appear. If it doesn't, don't
worry, just click the plus search for WLED and type in the host IP address. If
you're planning on using segments in your setup, make sure you set up your
segment before you integrate into Home Assistant to ensure that they show up
properly. Once done you can click through and find the device in the entities.
You're going to want to rename them so it doesn't get confusing later on. The
built-in interface is quite limited, you can change the colour, the
brightness, and apply effects but that's about it. I believe if you integrate
using MQTT, you'll have much more options including things like the intensity and
speed of your effect. I've linked to Dr Zzz's github below where he's integrated
all of the features through MQTT for his WLED setup. And there we go we've
installed some outdoor lighting using WLED and WS2812B LED strip. It's got
loads of pre-made effects, and it's integrated into Home Assistant. Let me
know in the comments below where you've got your WLED setup installed.
I said I'll show you what my favourite effect is so here we go.
My favourite effect is the candle multi. As you probably know I enjoy ambient
lighting that adds warmth to the environment. It's nice to be able to use
my LED strip to enhance the ambience provided by the candles and the festoon
in my garden. What makes this effect great is the colour palette I'm using. I've
decided to create my own colour palette and I'm using a colour gradient effect
over the strip. My colour palette goes from magenta, to a warm orange, to a blue
and you can see how it gradually changes throughout the strip .For the candle
effect that I was looking for, I've set my time to 15% and my effect intensity
to 100% - it looks great. And there we go - digital LED strip with WLED and
integrates into Home Assistant. Make sure you hit the subscribe button below so
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