[App][Pro] D.A.L.O.R - Digitally Addressable LEDs On Rest

D.A.L.O.R - Digitally Addressable LEDs On Rest

Automate your DIY RGB(W) LED devices
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AppStore
Frequently Asked Questions
Changelog

Supported Languages

:uk: English
:de: German

The Idea

We wanted to create an easy to use “toolbox”, for even not so tech savvy users, enabling just anyone to build their own led dashboards and lights. We started off with the particle.io ecosystem, simply because it is exceptionally easy to use and requires no programming or embedded hardware knowledge for you at all to get started.
The WLED firmware is also supported, for the more tech savvy people amongst you.

Getting Started

D.A.L.O.R supports two different firmware projects. NPOR and WLED. Which one to choose primarily depends on what your want and maybe on your skills.
The NPOR firmware was originally designed especially for D.A.L.O.R, to serve as a plug and play framework for DIY LED dashboards. Of course it can also be used to drive a basic LED lighting.
The WLED firmware is designed especially as an advanced LED lighting controller. The LED dashboard features are currently not supported for WLED. (might get added at some point but no promises)

Here is a short table, to give you a better idea what D.A.L.O.R in combination with the firmwares supports:

Firmware: NPOR WLED
Per LED Control by Flowcard No
LED Renaming Yes *6) No
Standard Full Color Light Controls Yes Yes *5)
Firmware Effects by Flowcard by Flowcard
Light Effects *1) Basic Extensive
Supports Strip Segmentations No by Flowcard
Can be paired as "light" device *2) Yes Yes
Can be paired as "other" device *3) Yes No
Supports White Channel *4) No No
Firmware Based Nightmode No Yes
Firmware Based Presets No by Flowcard *7)
  1. Firmware Effects
    Please read up on the individual firmware projects what kind of effects they currently support.
  2. As Light
    This will make Homey treat it as an actual light and it will also be controllable as light by any attached systems. Like Google Homey, Alexa and whatever not.
  3. As Other
    This is possible to simply avoid the device being treated as light, which comes in Handy if you want to use the device as a led dashboard for example.
  4. White Channel
    The firmwares actually support the white channel, but this is currently not implemented in the D.A.L.O.R app.
  5. When setting the light thought the UI of the Homey app, the set colors are applied to all segments.
  6. LED renaming is useful to keep overview in your flows, when you use the device as a dashboard. Bear in mind that renaming LEDs does not automatically update their label if they are used in flowcards already. This is a limitation on how Homey works.
  7. You cannot save WLED presets from within Homey, but you can activate any preset which is stored in your controller.

With Neopixels On Rest (NPOR) on particle.io controllers

Required Skill(s)

None. The firmware can be installed via GUI without any technical knowledge.

Getting Started

Everything you need to get started can be found in the corresponding GitHub project over here: GitHub - Shakesbeard/neopixel-on-rest
Follow the instructions there to set up your controller and include it in your network. It literally is just a few clicks.

Setup In Homey

Once paired with Homey, you can configure the device directly from the advanced settings page of the device view.

With WLED on ESP8266 or ESP32 controllers

Required Skill(s)

Basic knowledge about microcontrollers. Requires flashing and configuring the firmware and device by hand.

Getting Started

Find the WLED project on GitHub here: GitHub - Aircoookie/WLED: Control WS2812B and many more types of digital RGB LEDs with an ESP8266 or ESP32 over WiFi!
Follow the instructions there to set up your controller and include it in your network.
Once it is up and running with the latest WLED firmware on your local network you can pair it with Homey. Do not modify the preconfigured mDNS service name.

Homey Specifics (Important)

WLED supports three color channels whilst Homey only offers one at a time. To come around this limitation there is an additional control in the Homey UI to switch between the color channels.
Any UI or flowcard actions which are targetting standard lighting features will target the WLED color channel selected. You can change the channel being controlled using flowcards as well.

Setup In Homey

You can configure usage features through Homey only. For any fundamentel settings, please make use of the original WLED app.

Recommendations

LED Dashboard & Basic Lights: Use NPOR on particle
Effect Lighting: Use WLED on ESP

Also, here is an interresting guide regarding LED strips in general: The Ultimate Guide to LED Strips

Wiring The Electronics

For simplicity here is the wiring example based on a breadboard setup using the NPOR firmware on a particle photon controller. This example is suitable for using 5V LED strips.


Prototype Parts List:

  • 1x half+ Breadboard
  • 1x Particle Photon Controller
  • 1x 470 Ohm Resistor
  • 1x 1000 uF Capacitor
  • 1x 74AHCT125 High Speed Logic Lifter

Note: The capacitor and the resistor are in place to protect your LEDs from current peaks, which might occur when powering up the device, only.

The yellow line coming from port A4 is the data line for the LEDs. It runs through the logic lifter to lift the 3.3V signal up to 5V.

The wiring schema basically applies to all setups but keep the following points in mind when designing your device:

  • The data port for WLED is a different one. Please check the WLED project page for which port your data line needs to be connected to.
  • Each firmware supports different kinds of LEDs. Please read up on which LEDs are supported by each firmware on their respective project pages on GitHub.
  • Depending on how many LEDs you are connecting, you will need a strong enough power supply. Do not drain more than 1A through the controllers! For example, if you power the particle controller through the onboard USB port, the controller will pop a fuse if your LEDs drain more than 1A through the controller board. Make sure your LEDs have direct access to the power supply and that they share the Ground with the controller. Again, for more in depth details please see the Adafruit Ueberguide on this technology, linked from the NPOR firmware GitHub page.

Dashboard Prototype

@home_scherer created the first dashboard for use with the NPOR firmware.
Check out his awesome work on this:

3D Files For Recreation

Special Thanks To

@home_scherer for the awesome idea and contributions to the app’s graphics.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Common

Q: I have included the device in my network but it does not show up for pairing?
A1: Check your network configuraiton: Make sure your new device is on the same network as your Homey or ensure routing between both devices.
A2: In case of the WLED firmware, make sure you did not modify the preconfigured mDNS service name. It should read something like “wled xxxxxxxx”.
A3: If the device still does not show up for pairing, then there is most likely a problem with Homey’s mDNS discovery service. Try restarting the D.A.L.O.R app and try again. It might take up to a few minutes after the app is started before it can recognize the device.

Q: Do I need to give the device a fixed IP address?
A: No. This is not required. But as with any IoT stuff it would be a good practice to do that anyways.

Q: Do you provide support for the controller firmware?
A: I do provide support for the unmodified NPOR firmware, but I cannot provide support for modified versions, nor can I provide support for the WLED firmware. Please ask the author of that firmware for support if needed.

Q: Why does the Homey UI not update the color setting if I change it in another app?
A: This simply is because we are not operating an ordinary light. All other supported settings are synchronized. The cached channel colors for the WLED firmware are read from the first segment only, but updates are not reflected in the color picker either.

NPOR Firmware Only

Q: I paired the device but it is not discovered, has timeouts or keeps blinking green.
A: Make sure your 2.4Ghz wifi has a different SSID than your 5Ghz wifi. Many IoT devices require 2.4Ghz and have problems connecting if both frequencies are advertised on the the same SSID.

Q: My particle controller keeps blinking green.
A: This means it has troubles connecting to your wifi. Make sure you are connecting to a 2.4Ghz wifi only. Try pushing the reset button on the controller to force the controller to reboot (this does not delete any settings).

WLED Firmware Only

Q: Why is my device turning on if I restart the app?
A: In the device’s advances settings you can turn off restoring of the device state on restart of the controller. Restarting the app basically causes the same event to trigger as if the controller is restarted.

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Changelog

Homey App - v2.0.0

  • Update: The app has been migrated to Homey App SDK v3.
  • Added: WLED set effect flowcard now supports random effect and random palette selection.

Homey App - v1.0.1

  • Fixed: Color picker not initialized correctly after pairing.
  • Changed: WLED flowcard number inputs been replaced with range slider inputs.

Homey App - v1.0.0

  • Initial Release with NPOR and WLED firmware support.

NPOR Firmware - v3.1.3

  • Initial Release

Sounds like an awesome app! Just took down my WLED powered Christmas lights, so will be some time before I will try it :sweat_smile:

Anyway, great work!

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I can’t wait! Looks great! Finaly a WLED app on Homey.

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App is live! Enjoy and feel free to give me some feedback :smiley:

3 Likes

@Shakesbeard, when I look on the particle.io website I am a little bit confused. There are several boards available. But what do I need exactly when I want to build a LED Dashboard?
The (my) problem is, that I don’t have any knowledge. Can you recommend something?

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I would recommend getting a particle photon or argon. The photon is no longer produced but you can still buy it almost everywhere and it works just fine for this purpose. I used one of mine for developing this stuff.

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First day with Wled and NodeMCU and this App, really really awesome!!

2 Likes

Great app, easy to connect with the WLED, really plug and play, all effects from the controller work fine!
IÂŽm not sure to understand the three colors? What does this do?

That’s something specific to WLED. If you have effect ‘solid’ active it just behaves like a basic LED light and uses the primary color only. But some effects use up to 3 different colors. That’s why I added the ability to switch the color channel you control in the UI. Respectively why you can set 3 different colors in the effects flowcard.

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Thanks for making this App. Going to test it over the weekend 


Hey Siri , music mode 
 Niceeeee :sunglasses:!

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@Shakesbeard

first of all thank you so much for supporting wled :slight_smile: so great to have wled directly in the homey universe :slight_smile:

do you have a chance to implement these features, too?

  • show the ip address of the configured wled esp in the configuration tab of the device
  • control single leds of a stripe directly - e.g. turn led number 1 to red - number 2 to blue and so on

Actually I am considering of adding something similiar to what I implemented for LIFX LAN in the App Settings page instead. That would look somewhat like this:
image

This is possible, technically, but not as straight forward as with NPOR. It might come in future for WLED as well, but no promises at the moment.

For now I will keep collecting feedback So keep the ideas coming :slight_smile:

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That would look somewhat like this:

this will be finde :slight_smile:

but no promises at the moment

so I have to try the “segments” feature instead

Well, you could do that with segments. The general issue with WLED is that the LEDs are not addressable directly. The firmware however has a feature which lets you address single LEDs per segment.
So I will need to extend the existing single LED addressing feature (which is in the app for the NPOR firmware) first to support this slightly different approach. If I add that, I will also add the option to pair WLED as “other” device instead of a “light”.

2 Likes

this sounds great :slight_smile:

I tried to change the color via homey - but it will not change - in the wled app it works fine - is this a bug at the moment?

I am not aware of any bugs. Send me a private message with more details please.

When I noticed this app I immediately started thinking of a lamp for a strip I had laying around for a while already (like more then 2 years
), bought for a different project, but got replaced.
For the past few days, I’ve been testing the app pretty extensively cause I always like to know everything what is possible with any app (in combination of WLED) :smiley:

And I did notice (next to the already known bug) that the strip turns on when the app starts up (it was off before that), pretty easy reproducible, just turn the strip off, and then restart the app.
After a while the app will notice the lamp was turned on and syncs the state in Homey, it is shown off for a while.
Running latest Homey v5 rc64

Let me known if you need any more information