Episode: 4076
Title: HPR4076: WLED House Lights!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4076/hpr4076.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:19:32

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,076 from Monday the 18th of March 2024.
Today's show is entitled WLED House Lights.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 35 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is I talk about setting up here around House Lights.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host Operator.
I'm going to talk about WLED DIY House Lights.
I don't understand why I haven't done this one before, I guess because it's a lot and I think it took a bunch of notes and then I never did that episode.
So WLED is a open source of lights management program.
You've got big ones like ex lights, we'll do like with music and a couple other ones.
I never really cut into that space.
I just wanted easy Christmas lights year round.
So let's start it back when I kept having to get on the roof every year and I don't want to be on the roof.
I'm trying not to be on the roof at all.
So now let's just year round no matter what the holiday is or maybe we're having a party or whatever I can turn the lights on and whatever festive thing I want.
I don't want to climb up and do the Christmas relights and then pull them back down.
So I'm trying to get some people to help when there's replacements and swap sounds to be made to be easy.
But anyways, so what I'll say is the setup is pretty easy, the actual doing of everything.
You can buy Home Depot has J-channel, a thin J-channel.
You can buy, it's not cheap but it is a vinyl J-channel and it's very thin.
The stuff that the guy sells Mr. Lights or whatever you guys name is he has like bigger J-channel and I think it's metal.
And it comes in different colors or whatever.
I like the J-channel and Kruger or sorry at Home Depot because it's thinner.
So I think it comes in white only or I think I bought white and then I forgot that I would have to put stuff on the roof
because I wanted to put stuff lights on the roof too.
So I think I bought some spray paint and just spray paint at them.
And it actually the spray paint is an outdoor heavy-duty spray paint and it has worked for the most part.
There's been some parts where it's bent because of it cracked because of the plastic getting
so extremely hot on top of the roof.
It melted and then when that plastic melts the paint kind of fractures.
So if you can get dark colors for the roof, the memorialized miniature roof then do that.
If not, you're going to have to buy some of that metallic, the cool looking paint that looks like a roof,
like a stucco paint, textured paint.
So there's that and then the actual pixels.
And I'm not sure I'm going to do show notes even though it's pretty complicated
because I have a Google Docs and I'll try and export that and put it on my site too.
Just in case it's Project 365 is the name of it and looks like I have a...
Now this is probably three or four years coming.
So I will share with that, let me make a note head for my note head.
So I want to share Project 365 Docs and the sheep and put it on my site for backup.
Let's see.
Project.
So the first thing I'll open here is Excel spreadsheet.
And basically I measured the sides of the house.
Sorry I'm doing two projects at a time here.
I'm at the makerspace doing some stuff.
Yeah.
I'm still... I have notes about the setup.
Join the WLED and software SDR.
No, and this SR Discord.
Oh sound reactive Discord, sorry.
So there's a WLED for Discord and there's a sound reactive Discord.
If you're into the sound reactive stuff, sure.
It is easy to do once you actually get the part soldered on there.
I ordered a digital one and I think the firmware I had on there was different
because I waited like a year or six months.
I mean I spent a long time setting all this up, but I spent even longer on the sound.
So all in all, it's not a big commitment.
If you're a beginner to electronics and you understand basic electronics, it's easy.
You're soldering a teensy board or whatever they're called.
And you don't even need to do that.
You don't even need to solder anything actually.
I forgot.
You just buy the little pin outs set for the sink for 10 bucks online.
And then you crimp the ends and you can be fine with that.
You can solder them to make them nice and cleaner.
I have a cleaner connection, but you can just crimp your way to solder town.
By the way, the little sets that have the use for like Arduino boards,
the little clampy things.
There is a tool to crimp those, which had I thought about it.
I would have obviously known that there is a tool to crimp those.
So I don't know what that tool is, but I'm going to add it to my list here.
So they do not forget to get it.
It's like a crimping tool for those things.
Crimp tool for Arduino wires.
And it's kind of a standard, you know, a standard size.
It's basically a flap that sticks up on two sides before you plug in the pin.
And you have to smush down those two flaps.
And then there's two smaller flaps you smush down.
And then sometimes once you smush them, they're too flat.
And they won't actually go in with the piece of plastic.
There's apparently a crimping tool that will help you with all that.
So anyways, take your time.
Baby steps.
You know, learn the required basics for house wiring,
you know, ground hot load, common ground measuring ants.
I don't understand why I've not done this before.
Hold on.
W-L-E-D.
House.
House.
I just don't understand house tour.
And I walk around my house, my divide.
Wow.
Okay, I just haven't done this.
So yeah, you need to understand the basics.
You know, ground hot, load, line, common ground.
A-C-D-C measuring ants, voltage, voltmeter.
Gets you one of them.
Mr.
Happy Sockets.
Mr.
Power Amp.
It'll be in my notes.
Power
Power Reader thing.
Oh, it's called a kilowatt.
K-I-L-A-W-A-T-D.
Get it, kill it.
That measures the ants.
So when you plug it all in, you set it all up,
and turn it on, you're worried about how many ants
are going through your pixels.
We'll kind of get to that.
I'll try to be quick, but we'll kind of get to that.
So once you first starting all this out, you're like,
oh, you know, ants and, you know,
ants and volts and whatever.
It's not that it is kind of terrifying
because you don't want to burn all your stuff
or burn all your pixels.
But honestly, it's not that hard to figure out.
When you get the voltage saying that plus or minus 12 volts
on the 12 volt pixels,
and you can, with the fancy adapters,
you can dial up the voltage.
So if it's like 12 volts,
and you want me to give it a little bit of kick,
not recommended, run a house down, whatever, disclaimer,
obviously I'm not an electrician,
but you can put a little bit more ants
than what's required.
And this is common.
I'm not an electrician.
I don't know anything pertinent on me about electricity,
but I do know how to measure
how many voltages coming out of an amp.
And I'll get on a, you know, six volt,
you know, just a little crappy five volt power adapter.
I'll get six volts, eight volts sometimes it depends.
Like they're all over the place.
So if you have any measure,
if you try to actually measure the voltage
of some of these voltage adapters,
and I feel like it's the smaller ones
that have the most egregious voltage ranges.
So like, you know, it'll be like a six volt adapter,
but the, you know, little device will only be like three volts
and it only needs three volts.
So you plug it in that,
and then so half the time that the smaller ones
seem to be like a higher voltage.
I don't know if that's true.
And then the 12 volts,
because what I was looking for was a 12 volt adapter.
So anything around 12 volts,
it was always under 12 volts.
But then once you start getting past the 12 volt mark,
like higher voltage,
I think those are more consistent.
Meaning it's not consistent as a good quality thing,
but there are, you know, 12 volts, 12 volts,
there's 12 volts, no.
But, you know, 30 volts out of 30-fold adapter,
you're probably going to get 32 volts.
You'll get a little bit more if anything.
So that's been my experiences.
I don't want to go too far on about amps and volts,
but, you know, it's kind of important.
Kind of important.
So I'm actually anxious for a 22 gauge wire,
is 90.92 amps.
So, yeah.
22 gauge wire.
And that's the same wire I think that the pixel,
the pixels run off of.
Series, not parallel, like old Christmas tree lights.
Talk about ACDC, AC wall.
Talk about meters, max amps.
Yeah, 10 amps on the,
on the WLED pixels.
I think that's their maximum.
Uh, or maybe 10 amps max on the, on the wire,
on the, on the wire that I've got,
0.92 amps, I guess, you know, whatever.
So, anyways, I've got screenshots here also in the document.
567 LEDs has the count.
So, the way I haven't set up is I have it split to different directions.
Um, and then, uh, so there's actually two strands of lights coming from the source.
And, or one, and then it splits off and goes one direction.
And what else?
I think I've split off three ways.
Maybe just two.
I can't remember.
Um, so anyways, uh, I've got the spreadsheet showing the blocks
and I count, count it each section.
Um, it's a little hard to explain.
So, I basically have a, an Excel document.
And first, I started with the visual document.
So, I measured the, measured the distance on the things and marked it
with how, how far the roof line is, how far the, you know, bottom of the thing is,
the left side of the house, the right side of the house, the garage,
whatever I wanted to wrap.
And I labeled the length in there and then I started making an Excel table
and then I called them different things.
Like a three, a two, a one is all around the door.
You know, all everything in D is around the garage.
Everything in B is the rest of the house, essentially.
Um, I think maybe I, maybe I named them different based on their, their, uh,
their range too.
So, which, which segment there are?
So, I ended up breaking the house.
Anyways, let's say I ended up breaking up the house into like three sections.
Um, and you can look at the diagram.
I got the math in there.
The Excel speech that she chose the math and there and how I've calculated
inches to, um, feet and feet, inches and estimated pixels per inch.
So, each pixel holds, uh, wow, man.
Was it a yard?
Is how long they were or three feet?
Is how long they were right?
And you could fit however many pixels per strand.
I don't remember.
Anyways, um, and with the J channel, you have to drill the holes yourself.
So, if you have a drill press, please use it.
If you don't have a drill press, find somebody that has a drill press.
I did it by hand, uh, I want to say,
well, I guess 152, at least 152.
I don't know how many total pixels I have.
A thousand.
So, I've handled a thousand with a septal.
I use a septal for the J channel holes.
Um, and it's not a septal.
What do they call those, um,
suck and kind of suck drill bit?
So, it's a big, wide, flat drill bit.
And it's not like the drill bits to drill a hole with.
It's, uh, more like a cone shape with a blade on that cone shape,
so that you don't, um, so it doesn't just dig into the plastic and tear it all up.
It kind of slides in and then eventually starts to cut more and more.
It still can make a mess.
But, uh, if you have a drill press, you could do like three holes at a time,
slide down, three holes at a time, slide down, three holes.
Maybe in four or five, if you could set up some kind of jig that would hold
it on both sides.
Um, you know, set up a wooden jig that would hold it perfectly straight,
you know, five, five pieces at a time.
And, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, we've done.
So, anyways, that's, uh, the J channel thing again,
yet the screen shots, how I segmented everything out.
I set it up to somewhere I could inject more power down the line.
And there's some notes around the hardware and all that you're not really supposed to feed
more power into the line.
I don't keep on that wall, but you know, it's not like, because at first it was like,
oh, plug it in, go, you know, whatever, and now they're like, okay, you need by-law,
you probably have to run a whole new power line to the next strand or something, because
I'm not like the electrician.
So you start out by most of the video is telling you, yeah, just, you know, throw an extra
12 volts down the line, you'll be fine.
Now they're, now they say, run an entire line all the way from the beginning of the power
all the way down to the end.
So they're basically running a whole other line for power.
Or I think at least the positive side of the, whatever.
The real soldering is a real lead, we'll get that lead free solder.
Heat gun stretch lights, oh, it's stretch lights, so you got heat gun, you don't have a heat
gun, you do electronics, please get one.
It's for the shrink wire, it's for, you know, no use a lighter, it's for a bunch of other
things.
You can get heat gun based wire crimps or whatever.
So basically it's a, it's a heat shrink tube with solder in the middle and you heat it
up super hot and basically it melts the plastic around and then it melts the, in theory, it
melts the solder in the middle and once that middle band melts, it fuses the wire together
and you have a nice, not only do you have a, a nice solder, you have a nice, like seal
connection thing for the setup.
So those are pretty good to have inline inject, it's not right, which versus EVA, I'll
express really the same.
Yeah, so I'll express EVA for all of these boards, it honestly don't wait a month to
get your product, if you're not going to save any money unless you buy a bulk or something,
maybe.
This adapter is bad, and all of them is on toward the horrible, yes.
Oh, there's stores, easy stores, basically sir, sir 74, Q and LED and then the guy that
does, there's one of the, one of the guys that sell this stuff is, it's not, it's not
Quinn, I think Quinn is one of the guys and I think sir, it's also maybe Quinn, I don't,
this is old stuff, I would say probably five years old now, so maybe the whole landscape
has probably changed, but these guys sites are still up.
Yeah, you've got a moon module, which basically gives you like, this moon module guy gives
you like everything you need in one board.
So ESP32WLED, he's got one, two, three power inputs, I think.
Yeah, I think that's how that works or no, that's for the, whatever, anyways, that's
all kind of most of the hardware.
It's ESP32U program with Arduino and you can do it online, it's like WLED.tools and
then you load your browser and say you want access to the serial port done, you press the
button, you tell follow directions and it pushes sound reactive, you can even push from
there too, so it's great, you know, just recommend backing up your configs and stuff fairly
often, notes troubleshooting, there's a bunch of troubleshooting stuff, videos, fixing
the firmware installed WLED, it's installed at WLED.nv, sound reactive WLED, I'll put this
up as an actual show because it has been a couple of years and if this sits in a reserve
queue, it's probably not going to be super useful for much longer, but WLED's been rocking
forever on a discord and I'm always acting stuff, so I've got a buy list here, so I got
my fancy 12 volt, 17 volt, 200 watt adapter, it's just like no cover or no spare bones,
it's just sitting hanging out there, I do have it up in the garage, but it's protected
by a press board MFT, MFT stuff, press board is awful, don't ever buy it, the MDF stuff,
go for the MDF, don't get it wet still, but at least it's not a press board for Cry6.
So yeah, the wires are called WS, that's a whisky Sierra 2811 pixels, those are the
guys I use, I don't, the strips made me nervous, they're probably easily replaced, more
easily replaceable, if you do it right, so you could set it up just for where your
J-channel was just hot plug, so you could just, you know, unclip, because I have mine screwed
in with a screwdriver, and that is, you don't want to be like unscrewing screws on top
of your, if you want to have a clip system, where you can clip the J-channel in there, I
would, at all cost, I would try to make it that way and make it modular and do it right
the first time, I did not do it right the first time, so now if I have a pixel go out,
I have to, you know, patch where that hole is, what I would like to do, patch meaning
cut both ends, then, well, first you have to figure out the right pixel and if you mess
up, because if the pixel is out and you swap that pixel, it's not that pixel, it's probably
the pixel before it, so the pixel that was on is still working, but when then pushing
that signal down the line, it can't, so the second one is out, so you have to determine
which pixel is the one that's actually failing, is it the one that's out, or is it the one
before it, and if you want to be safe, you can try and check each individual pixel, but
it's like, I guess there's not really any way to check it, I guess the voltage or amps
on the other end, whatever, but I digress, they can be annoying to troubleshoot, it would
be nice to have it modular, where you just swap it out, the problem is, is your house
is not perfectly, you know, three feet, three feet in every calculation, so that model
won't really work, you're always going to have to just patch, I guess, got a kilowatt
here, so how many amputers that way you're not pushing too much, I was so nervous about
blowing stuff up, I had the maximum brightness calculator set, and it was like super low,
and I kept having problems with lights flickering and going crazy, so if the lights are flickering
are going crazy, it's in this order, your problem, not enough voltage, and then I would
say a short somewhere, then I would say the software itself, and then I would say too
much voltage, like too much voltage looks, and I've unfortunately done it, too much voltage
looks more like a surge in power, obviously when it's doing the effects, it'll just look
like it's a power surge, whereas if it's not enough power, it'll still look weird, and
things will still flickering or whatever, but it'll look obviously dim, your lights will
be darker at night, or whatever, so if the lights are going crazy and they're not working
and whatever, just turn up the voltage, turn up the power, turn up the amps, turn up everything
gradually, obviously, until it improves, and if it does not improve, then you've done
too much voltage, or something else is going on, so you know, could be anything, quad hands
is basically like a metal plate with magnets on it, I've had this one for a long time,
it gets sticky on the bottom, so you have to kind of keep that, I keep that plate oil
actually kind of sort of, it's a very slick plate, but it's sticky, so you know, they
didn't do like a high, they did a high gloss surface, but it's not a high anti sticky
surface, so what would actually you'd want is, you know, something like, what do you call
that stuff, Teflon, or not bottom of each side, so that way it would always, whatever,
but it would all be super slippery, so you have to find a compromise between whatever,
they sent me new stickers, I think, when they had some kind of class action lawsuit,
because of the bottom would scratch it or something, or the skis weren't right or something,
did you get nice, was this, not wire connectors, yeah, so these are called three way six port
connectors, connectors, quick connect, so as you're doing the patching again, cut it, you
know, start your two, strip your six wires, so clip your three wires, and then, you know,
strip the six, and then you pop each end in here, and you clamp it, and then you're done,
and you can have, be done with that, and be happy with that, or that's just a medium
for you to test, and then now you can solder it together, so either way you want to have
these, you want to order some of these, because it's Chris, this, this true story, Christmas
morning, the lights are out, and I can't, you know, I've did all this work, it was like
my second year with the lights, I think, third year, and I'm like, man, I did all this
work, you have to put up here, and maybe Halloween, I had messed with it before, probably,
because that's kind of when I start, I have to check it before Halloween, and then if
it needs work, hopefully, I can get my nephew in, and help me fix it, but if not, you
know, I tied it, so I do work to get it fixed, and then Halloween comes and goes, and
Christmas comes, and I'm trying to use it, and it's not working, so it's kind of annoying,
so Christmas morning, I'm out there, is hands are frozen, and I can't feel them, trying
to fix it, and I did the, that was with the quick, kind of stuff, and like, you don't want
to be doing that, if you want the patch to be as easily, you know, as quick as possible
to get fixed, and, you know, maybe if you're bored, it makes you nervous, come back out
another day, and it's nice outside, and that's difficult, yeah, the wire, these are adapters
that I use inside, these 15 DC power connectors, they say that they're not great, you know,
12 volt, it's not 12 volt, it's not 12 volt, quick connect 12 volt adapters, so it's
like a male, female, and barrel connector, and then the two pack, at least, at least
a two pack, now, if you're new to Arduino and electronics, and you don't know how to
triple check the power, before you double check the power connections, like every time
you go to plug it in, you know how to plug it in, but guess what, you have the orientation
flipped upside down, and you plug into power port, into some data port, done, they do
not make this stuff any improve, despite how you get proof it is, that makes sense, digital
the digital microphones for the sound reactive, it's pretty idiot proof, you plug it in,
you set it up, and when you change to one of the effects for sound reactive, and it's
not doing anything, chances are something is broken, they have like troubleshooting guides
and they have troubleshooting Arduino apps you can run that will show like the gain
and level, I guarantee you, if it's not working, you didn't connect it properly, because
I think out of the gate has like auto gain turned on, so you don't even have to adjust
anything, like it will automatically all just work, you know, some of the effects wouldn't
be great for troubleshooting, but in general, you turn the music off, and you know, your
lights stay on, or they don't do anything, and you turn the music on, and they start
doing stuff, it's working in some capacity, and then that's when you get into having
a troubleshoot, and I did get some signal, but the signal I had was very low, and that's
when it started driving me insane, and I finally gave up, and then came back to it a year
later, and I think I soldered a new one on there, or maybe I tried to, I can't even remember,
anyways, oh, here's the heat shrink tubing kit connectors, heat shrink tubing kit,
that's what they call it, the sleep tube wrap cable wire kit, so heat shrink tubing kit,
which doesn't say anything about the solder in the middle, but it's actually pretty cool,
it's an art form, and you got to do it right, you're basically melting the plastic, and
if you're sitting under a fire smoke detector, like my shop is for whatever dumb reason,
it will set that off pretty quickly, nice wire strippers, your little pack of whatever
they call that, housing, male female pin connectors, 40 pin, 2.54 millimeter, it's what they
call it, 2.54 millimeters, all your darn doing stuff, here's the J channel, drill press,
software to find, the software is WLED, I use all the sound reactives, some backup config,
backup your config, backup your presets, no, the one music sign and two music sign indicate
if it is volume or FFT driven, so FFT is one of the sound reactive functions features,
the single note sign means that it's a volume based sound reactive play to the kit,
so that could make sense, if you know you want to do volume based stuff, and I'm pretty
sure FFT is full blown EQ equalizer, it's not beat detection, I don't think it's not
beat detection, possibly, maybe it's got beat detection built into it, it works, it works
pretty good, there's instances where you know it gets, it's not perfect, you know, but
it reminds me of back in the days when you had like beat detection software with God tractor
and it was kind of sort of there, but it didn't work, now it's all just like, yeah, I do
have been there, something who knows, yeah, sound reactive, mics, notes, options, FM,
FM transmitter, so you can get a, yeah, you know, you can get a, a legal track, AM transmitter
or whatever, or a legal FM transmitter, or you can get the illegal ones that will, the
whole neighborhood will hear your radio station, that are like, you know, you get the FCC
fans driving down here, driving down the street, I don't see, yeah, here's some amps, that's
about amp, 0.47 after inject, a little higher brightness, still ever so slightly dim at the
end, 0.37 on before inject power, 0.31 off, 0.24 off, 9.6 mid up the left side, it says
voltage dropping from 12 to 9 volts, let's put a V in there, because 9.6 watt feet, 9.6 feet
up the, I guess it's voltage, anyways, that's my notes for Wled, use drill dress, it's
fun, the wife is responsible for the colors and setting it and plugging it in, so she
knows what adapters to plug in and what to do, sorry, got stuff going on here, how to test
this, we, she knows, I train her how to plug it in, an unplugged, back to her how to, you
know, if there's a surge or something which unfortunately does happen, that's why you
have two, at least two, because once we're back up, you want to have a hot spare of everything,
hot spare of the pixels, I would buy double the amount of pixels you need, because chances
are you're going to want to, you know, replace everything at some point, essentially, so if
the whole thing, let's say the whole kit, I see five years, you never have to order another
thing, well guess what, in five years you're not going to be able to order any of the pixels
you're talking about, and if you do, they're going to be 20 years old, whatever, so that's
it, just buy double everything, you know, maybe you buy a sample just to get it started,
so you buy whatever in, you know, a small strip of, of WLED, just so you can make sure
it works and you figured it out, not too big of a deal for you, but if you're, kind of
throw the chairchannel, you're going to call by the house, like monkey for, I think it
took me 10 days on enough, that's from like, having no idea, you know, just watching
YouTube videos to practical stuff, so, you know, the engineering, the development, the
understanding, the development of the spreadsheet, the development of the segmentation, so from
actually physically doing stuff all the way to whatever, it's about 10 days on and off,
I did weekends, so like a weekday, so I would try to do, if I worked on it, I'd try
to work on a minimum of like, you know, commit myself like four hours to work, because you
start to get all the crap out, and you know, if you only have a short time to work on it,
there's no point in working on it, go do something else that doesn't require, you know, 40
minutes to set up before you start actually working on project, so project management
is that this is about, so anyways, take your time, baby steps, if something's wrong,
start from the beginning, ask WLED, take a picture, they'll laugh at you, but they're
helpful, they're very helpful, the other guy, I want to mention that is in a lot of the
links for the videos, I'm going to chat news, I'm going to discord, like Mr. Lights, Mr.
White, don't remember his name, I don't see him, he's not in my team, but he's in the
video links, WLED house, if you just type WLED house, he's like the top for all that stuff,
or at least he was, you know, when I was doing it, let's see, the hook up, he's actually
good, kind of a ball, you know what I'm going to do, the other guy is Dr. ZZS, Dr. ZZS, Dr.
ZZS, his videos are pretty good, he goes through everything, the set up, his house,
the stuff he sells, J Channel, or whatever, that's pretty much it, I will put a link to
the stuff, if anybody has any questions, feel free to reach out, if you have any suggestions
on, if you have any suggestions on good quality, I sickle lights without building your own,
please let me know, my step, other roast them, likes them, prefers them, and I like them,
but I don't want to have to do the strip, wire, LED thing, that doesn't sound like fun to me at all.
So anyways, if anybody has any suggestions on that, let me know, and take it easy, record a show.
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