This is a Work In Progress as I am just getting started.
We have started a long-overdue kitchen renovation. The design is finished, the cabinets (etc) have been ordered. I have been charged with adding under-cabinet lighting. What better thing to use than WLED, which I use for my COVID-Christmas outdoor lighting (because static lights are boring).
There are 5 cabinets: L&R of the cooker, L&R of the sink & L of the fridge. Each will have its own D1-Mini. I played with the ESP-01 for a while and decided that it was just too glitchy - no amount of tinkering would keep it running without rebooting. The goal is to keep the controller small but at the end of the day, a slightly bigger controller is better than one which is unstable. The first prototype is pictured here. A D1 Mini and a Sidecar for connectors and resistors & capacitor. Eventually I will cut off the unneeded protoboard and package it.
Determining how to get power to the controller has been difficult but there are outlets directly under each cabinet and I will install new USB outlets in the boxes as a part of the reno. Wires will be run up the new backsplash tile and along the bottom of the cabinet to a low-profile 3D printed housing behind the LEDs which will be in aluminum profiles with diffusers. I am using SK6812 RGBW to get a better white than I get with RGB. WLED handles the white perfectly.
Since taking the pictures I added a button connection (and SMD pullup) for a local power toggle/dimmer.
Eventually control will be from (as of yet unspecified) touch panels which will communicate with a central Raspberry Pi MQTT broker and send commands to the WLED controllers using Node Red (on the Pi) using the HTTP API or MQTT (when it matures). My outdoor WLED lights are controlled this way (and are run by a NodeMCU in an ammo box on my back porch, a story for another day).
Look on Quindor’s excellent site at https://QuinLED.info and in particular, look for the QuinLED Dig Uno. You can purchase them pre-built, delivered to your new home. It can help accelerate your project forward.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I have been all over his site and as cool as it is, there are no schematics. I am not buying into someone selling LED control circuitry that I can design and build myself (I have been an engineer for a very long time) until I can see what it is I am buying. I don’t need his hardware because I am driving a maximum of 40 LEDs in one strip and WLED does 95% of what I want out of the box. I can compile in any changes I need.
While I appreciate your reply as I too have been engineering solutions for a very long time myself.
That said, if you really want the schematic, I can sketch one up for you sometime.
I agree, 40 LEDs is not enough to warrant a QuinLED Dig Uno.
You can buy a magichome or other addressable LED controller off AliExpress or Amazon / etc. and flash your own compiled WLED onto it. But, that’s the same thing as a QuinLED Dig Uno because you will not get schematics. In fact, you won’t even get a fuse like you do on the QuinLED Dig Uno. With other solutions, you also don’t get the option to have a temperature sensor so you know if the enclosure is getting too warm either, unlike the DigUno.
FYI, Quindor doesn’t post the gerber files or schematics for his boards because then there is nothing stopping someone from 100% blatantly copying his work and releasing various competing versions - with potential flaws. That would surely confuse people who are not as savvy as you about such things.
See viralleds and WLED This is always a risk with open source stuff. And with the audience of the ripoff not knowing of the parent project the original author doesn’t get the credit they deserve. I have WLED fully open because I want everyone to be able to do absolutely everything they could imagine with it - but of course it has it’s drawbacks like everything in life.
Quindor’s approach to the DigUno to keeping the design semi-closed is well justified in my opinion since it doesn’t really increase the price (the bare PCBs are dirt cheap from the fab he cooperates with, the components make up a way bigger cut) and it protects less savvy users from potentially dangerous clones (Dig Unos are rated for tens of amps, if you run that through some cheap knockoff, it might start a fire)
Well, anyone is free to start a fire with their own hardware when using WLED (I assume no liabilities) - the problem arises when you have a project and you tell people that it is safe - like the Dig Uno - and then it is actually decreasing safety by being poorly put together.
I agree with you and @huggy-d1for the most part and I certainly do not begrudge him for keeping his schematic under wraps. The danger that some crafty person in China will reproduce it and sell it for next to nothing with lower grade components is real. A friend of mine developed the first programmable LED bicycle spoke lights and worked with a Chinese manufacturer. Before he could sell any, they were being sold by a half dozen companies for half of what his cost.
I am simply making a decision to “roll my own” because I can get exactly what I want at a cost I am willing to pay. I get the feeling that Quindor’s product is solid and reliable and an excellent choice for people without the skills, desire or time to engineer their own solution. And I would never consider anything like that from Aliexpress because I have opened many Aliexpress products and know what’s inside. As they say, the sour taste of poor quality lingers much longer than the sweetness of low price. You get what you pay for. Sometimes you get a solid product but you are taking a risk.
As far as WLED is concerned, I prize anything that “just works” as well as this. The ESPixelStick software is another example of something that “just works”. I started playing with that and built my own NodeMCU-based hardware because size wasn’t a consideration. This project benefits from smaller hardware but the ESP-01 was not reliable (that might have been my hardware) but the D1-Mini does what I need when combined with WLED. My hat is off to you @Aircoookie and all the contributors.
For the under-counter lights in my kitchen, I went with the CCT (cool-white / warm-white) strip LEDs. The last thing I want when I’m cooking is a Christmas tree or disco ball, as I only need to see the (reasonably color-accurate) foods. I like LOTS of light in the kitchen, standard illumination levels elsewhere.
This is always a risk with open source stuff. And with the audience of the ripoff not knowing of the parent project the original author doesn’t get the credit they deserve. I have WLED fully open because I want everyone to be able to do absolutely everything they could imagine with it - but of course it has it’s drawbacks like everything in life.