Skip to content

Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

For Christmas I installed 20M (4 x 5M) of RGB LED strips, and 1 RGB spotlight under our patio, I then used the WIFI to 2.4GHz bridge (V4) (same used here) to connect them to the network in 2 groups.

Now they can be turned on using our phones, etc… But I don’t carry my phone with me everywhere so this seemed fun but short sighted… With the ESP8266, a Touch screen, and 3.3v Arduino mini pro, I was able to create a wireless touch screen controller for the Christmas lights.

Note: There is one caveat; it’s slow. This is due to the long delays I’ve had to add to the code to make sure the ESP8266 module actually does what it’s told to do, rather than replying “busy s…”. When it’s finally finished loading, it takes 3 Seconds for anything to happen after pressing a button. Some buttons have multiple actions, so they take ‘x’ times 3 seconds to complete.

Pin connections to Arduino Mini Pro 3.3v (compatible):

Display Touch ESP8266
SDO(MISO) – Pin 12
LED – 3.3V
SCK – Pin 13
SDI(MOSI) – Pin 11
D/C – Pin 9
RESET – RST
CS – Pin 10
GND – GND
VCC – 3.3V
T_IRQ – pin 2
T_DO – pin 3
T_DIN – pin 4
T_CS – pin 5
T_CLK – pin 6
RXD – Pin 7
TXD – Pin 8
CH_PD – VCC
VCC – 3.3v
GND – GND

The code is working although not “polished”. The RGB strip and globes are from different OEM vendors: Globes – LimitlessLED and Strip lights – Mi-Light. They are also different generations, which is why I have 2 lines for on and off. Fortunately they can both be paired to the same 2.4GHz bridge because they are made by the same manufacturer.

The 2 rows of RGB strips are paired to the bridge using 2x  Mi-Light RGB 4-Zone strip controllers. Similar to these.

In future I may use another motion detector to get them to turn on automatically and also reduce/refine the delays in the code for the ESP8266. When writing it, I was in a poor reception area so it could account for the issues.

Last Source Code: test_touch_screen_LEDS_Blanked (Needs cleaning up).

Sources:

Cheers.

3 thoughts on “Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller”

    1. HI, I’ve uploaded the source code to the bottom of the post. It’s a mixture of a few different samples. I’ve been reading into using the ESP8266 directly with the Arduino IDE so hopefully any new projects I make will be using the chip directly and not as a daughter board off an Arduino Pro/Nano (depending on the pin out requirements).

      Cheers

Leave a Reply to Kristian Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *