An ESP8266-based Christmas lights project using Neopixel.

A WS2812B LEDs strip gets controlled by a WiFi-connected Espressif ESP8266 using a simple web interface. The web interface gets directly served by the microcontroller itself at the endpoint /index but it can be configured to be served by an external service (Glitch, GitHub, Netlify, ...) if the ESP8266's port gets exposed outside the LAN (thing I didn't have the necessity to do).

The Web UI

A screenshot of the Web UI is visible here (may change in the future):

The UI is in Italian but can be easily translated in English or any other language:

• "Effetto" is the effect section. Here one of the included effects can be chosen or "Tutti" that changes the effect every N second (I set 30 seconds).
• "Colore" to set a specific color for the effects requiring it (some use a rainbow so the color makes no difference for them) or a Random one that will change every time the effect changes
• "Luminosità" to set the brightness
• "Accendi/Spagni" to switch on/off the whole strip

The Web UI communicates with the controller using a very simple HTTP Rest interface I have written. The HTML file (the JS and CSS parts are directly inside it) is situated inside the data/ directory. Every time the Web UI is refreshed (or at the first render) it queries the ESP8266 for the current state and updates itself accordingly.

Inspiration

Most (if not all) the effects I used come from the Neopixel, Fastled or WS2812EX libraries/examples.

Installation

I worked using the Platformio extension from VSCode and the configuration file has been included. If you are not using Platformio, these are the third-party libraries you will need:

• Adafruit Neopixel
• ESPAsyncWebServer
• ArduinoJson

In src/ you will find the main.cpp file (where basically all code sits). All the customisable variables are in include/main.h and in the not included include/credentials.h that you have to create with the following secrets:

#define WIFI_SSID "Your WiFi SSID"
#define WIFI_PASSWORD "Your WiFi Password"

#define OTA_PASSWORD "password"

#define LITTLE_FS_USER "LittleFS User"
#define LITTLE_FS_PASSWORD "LittleFS Password"