Festive lights for raspberry pi, led lights and GPIO
Installation is super easy! in just 6123 steps you will get a fully functional LED light strip automation for your raspberry pi!
These instructions are for the official raspbian distribution (Raspbian 10 Buster).
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If you don't really care about how it works, just skip to the Install section.
There's a script that automates the build process and also takes care of depdendencies, setting a user and a daemon that auto starts.
libcurl4-openssl-dev(or some otherlibcurl4-xxx-devoption) - for fetching sunrise/sunset datanlohmann-json-dev- for parsing the JSON datapigpiodandlibpigpiod-if-dev- access GPIO in user mode via a daemonlibcctz-devNot used yet, but already required - for calculating TZ data based dates. I couldn't find a simple TZ data parser to help me with that, ping me if you found something. Oh, and it doesn't help if I need to tell it where the TZ data files are, because these can change for each distro (even though only raspbian is supported for now).
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev pigpiod libpigpiod-if-dev nlohmann-json-dev libcctz-dev
Dependencies required for building:
g++makegitsudo apt-get install g++ make git
Just run make.
Your built product should be in build/festi
- You will need an API key from DarkSky, it is used to fetch sunrise and sunset times every day.
- I'm working on a manual override to the API, can be used with a non connected box, or just as an override, currently - the sunrise override works (I use it to turn off the lights at 1am by telling it the sunrise is at 1am)
- You will also need your longitude and latitude (can be of your city too) for the DarkSky API so that your sunrise and sunset times are correct
- Make sure your local timezone is correct, I may fix this sometime (
sudo raspi-configand follow instructions to set timezone) (update: working on this)
You can use the provided install script to automate stuff for you.
Try it with ./install.sh
I used pin 6 for ground, but you can use any ground pin.
The second pin is 24 (GPIO24).
You can change that in sun.cpp (look for the CTOR and the number 24).
I may add this to the config.
To view your GPIO pin layout, type: pinout or check out https://pinout.xyz/.
My knowledge in electronics is about the same as Donald Trump's understanding of human rights.
While I've been running this project at home for a while now, it may burn your raspberry pi, your LED lights, your balcony and start a hurricane in some remote place in the world.
Well, I recently moved to Berlin, and by the looks of it, everyone and their dog has a LED light strip hanging out from their balconies.
Wife said we had to get one, so I did.
After about a dozen of chains bought on Amazon, she was satisfied with the color.
Since I'm very very clever, I bought a strip with a solar charger - it charges during the day, and when it gets darks - it automagically turns on.
I couldn't have been happier.
Enter autumn.
It appears there is no sun in Berlin for about 10 months a year.
The lights faintly turned on around 16:00 and died away about 16:10.
Mere mortals would be running to Amazon to get a new wall socket connected LED light strip.
Me? nope.
Time to learn what are these pins hanging out of my raspberry pi and put them to good use!