My first FastLED-powered, RGB LED Christmas Tree,

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My first FastLED-powered, RGB LED Christmas Tree, with Wi-Fi! Because why not?! Controlled with a web app, can change brightness, pattern, etc. Running Mark’s fantastic ColorWavesWithPalettes pattern in this video. Going to try to come up with some custom palettes and a few other patterns over the next few weeks.

Source: https://github.com/evilgeniuslabs/tree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc4W26HInwM

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I love it. And Wifi! How do you have the wifi integrated?

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Thanks! I used a Particle Photon. :slight_smile:

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Looks awesome! Does FastLED work with the Photon? I’m guessing it does, if you did it, but I was under the impression that Photon wasn’t supported yet…

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Thanks! Yeah, it’s supported now: https://github.com/focalintent/FastLED-Sparkcore/commit/1f1dd0e76b24d58f538669e8a60cdc88d8e87bde

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Hi @Jason_Coon , nice tree !
You beat me to it, I am currently adding a Bluetooth module and a MSGEQ7 audio frequency analyser module to the Xmas tree I built last year. Should have it finished in a day or so.
Last year I ran out of time to add my own animations and only used a slightly modified ‘Color Twinke’ sketch from Mark Kriegsman. Still was awesome !!
Leaves me about 4 weeks to add my own animations that can react nicely to ambiant sound and music and add Bluetooth control.
Hmmm… 4 weeks… will it be enough !?
Maybe I’ll have to steal some Xmas tree sketches as they become available… Hurry-up with you sketch upgrades… :wink:

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Thanks, JP! You definitely have me beat on the hardware. I just wrapped a string of lights around the tree and plugged it into a Photon board. :slight_smile: I’ll be sure to share any new patterns I come up with.

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Yeah, I’m definitely ahead on the HW but only because I started this tree around October 2014. :slight_smile:
On the HW side, I’m only adding the 2 modules but I hope to be able to sketch out those Xmas tree videos that have been playing inside my head for a week now… :wink:

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very nice, I hope I can get this to work as well

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Thanks, let me know if you have any questions/problems, and I’ll try to help.

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BE CAREFUL! Youtube WILL report your video for 3rd party content with the music. Otherwise looks nice.

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Thanks, but that’s not a concern, I used the YouTube Audio Library: https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

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ok cause I had an issue with mine doing that.

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@Jason_Coon I am learning my way around the photon and would love to play with your app… any chance of getting an access token so I can see how it all ticks? :slight_smile:

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@Erin_St_Blaine That’d be great! I would love some feedback on it.

You enter your access token from Particle. You can get it in the Particle Build IDE, in the Settings tab: https://docs.particle.io/guide/getting-started/build/photon/#account-information

Once you enter it into my app, you can click the button to save it. It’s saved in browser local storage. It’s not sent to me, I promise I cannot access it. You should be careful not to share it with anyone else, or they could take control of your Particle devices.

After that, it should list your devices. If you select a device that is running one of my sketches, it should get the pattern list and update the controls with the current variable values (brightness, selected pattern, etc).

I’ll try to write up some better instructions later tonight.

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@Jason_Coon I am on learning too. Thus I got the photon registered and run a FastLED demo right out from the web IDE. Now I am not sure how to get there your software?
A second question arises when I read ‘infrared remote’ in your readme: is this based on a common community project?

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@Holger_Runkewitz I use Particle Dev, their “desktop” IDE. Using it, you should be able to compile and upload the source code (linked in the post above). I think you can use the Particle Build web IDE, you’ll just need to copy tree.ino and GradientPalettes.h, and include the FastLED library (through the libraries tab).

I haven’t tried getting an infrared remote working with the Photon, but I have built similar IR-controlled projects using a Teensy instead: https://github.com/jasoncoon/jewelrytree-teensy-ir

It’s not based on a common community project, but most of my projects have very similar structure, and only really differ on the microcontroller, LED type, control method (IR, Wi-FI), patterns included, etc.

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Yeah - I succeeded! Great, and Thanks!

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@Jason_Coon ​, just getting going with my own Christmas Photon/WS2812 project as well. Having some corruption/quick blinking issues with the Neopixel library so was going to switch to FastLed. How are the pins mapped though? I.E. is D2 pin 2 or 3 or what?