Sundial

Usermods
1

Totally new to WLED, and have a few questions…

I have a 24 led ring light (ws2812, esp-01), and am wanting to make a ‘sundial’ which will indicate the sun position by showing a red LED at the approximate location (divided by 24), and have the remaining LEDs set to a color based upon day/night.

For example, at sunrise, the surrounding LEDs are bright white/yellow, and the sun position led would be on the left, colored orange/red (which from where I sit is east). By noon, the sun position would be at the top and its color bright red, and the surrounding LEDs a dim orange. From the golden hour to sunset to night, the ‘sun’ would change colors from orange to red to dim white, and the surrounding LEDs would transition from an orange to a blue.

It would be awesome if it would update the LEDs at some editable interval. Also if the TZ/location can be set by a web UI. It would be cool to be able to set the number of LEDs as well and define which LED should be ‘noon’ and which direction it should rotate. (I’m facing south from my office, but if I were facing north, I would want it the opposite.)

It would be nice to have the ability to turn off the ring completely, have the ability to give notifications (where all of the LEDs quickly transition to a certain color, then return back to the sundial setting), and be able to do these through MQTT.

Does this seem too ambitious for a first WLED project? lol

Are there existing mods/settings that may be able to accomplish this? Would a usermod to WLED be the best approach? Or, should I just do totally custom code?

2

Seems like this would be a dedicated project. Why not write your own code vs wled?

1 Like
3

I’m definitely considering this. I posed the question here just to see if using wled as a base would be easier/better than doing it as custom code, but given the specific features there certainly is reason to do that way.

4

Wled could be used as a base but my interpretation of the description of your project, you don’t need much of what it has to offer except wifi.

Now if you wanted sundial to be one effect amoung many then wled integration could be worthwhile.