Magic LEDs: Self-Organizing with ESP32 CAM & Simple Image Processing!

[@atomic14]

Interested in ESP32 Audio: kzbin.info/aero/PL5vDt5AALlRfGVUv2x7riDMIOX34udtKD Looking for all my ESP32 projects: kzbin.info/aero/PL5vDt5AALlRdN2KyL30l8j7kLCxhDUrNw

[@icefire5555]

I came here from reddit! this is amazing!

[@dynxt-_-3243]

Same

[@jerkwagon]

345 subs and your page is just like the other big channels! Great job, keep up the hard work, we appriciate people like you who are willing to help and show us noobs how these things work! Hopeflly you can read this to know i liked this video!

[@atomic14]

Thank you! It does really help to know that people enjoy watching.

[@MagicAndReason]

Absolutely wonderful! Imagine never having to untangle your Xmas lights each year! My old man wouldn't be able to curse & cuss any more.

[@torymblue2000]

Very cool!!!!!!! I could see this being ideal for making bush nets, tree nets etc.

[@atomic14]

Yep, I'm going to use it on the Christmas tree this year.

[@christianeaton]

@@atomic14 How are you thinking of dealing with the multidimensionalality? Multiple cameras?

[@MikeKarliner]

Tried it, and it works brilliantly!

[@atomic14]

That's awesome! Would be great to see a video if you have one?

[@HartWelles]

This is dope dude! This should make LED mapping a breeze!

[@atomic14]

Thanks!

[@TheElectronicEngineer]

Started watching this after seeing your XMas tree video...There is a lot of potential here...Want to play around with this. Will have to order a bunch of WS2811

[@iZilly]

is this not a similar thing that the christmas light kit you can buy for christmas trees? i been wanting to get the light kits but thought they were very expensive so could one do a kit like this, it might work out much cheaper

[@atomic14]

I'm looking forward to Christmas, I'll be getting some more lights and trying some 3D mapping!

[@horace577]

This is like magic . . amazing beautiful app . . I hope to get it working . everyone will think I am a genius.

[@peter-frankspierenburg9410]

That is fantastic!

[@trhosking]

Love it! Of course, the next logical step is to use a second camera and map the LEDs into 3D space.

[@atomic14]

Have a look at this - it's quite a bit more advanced than what I've done - github.com/aaknitt/pixel_mapper

[@trhosking]

@@atomic14 Oh my God! I was looking at this video wondering if there was anything I could do to make it useable with XLights! :D

[@trhosking]

@@atomic14 If you have Discord, I'm Munger#5777. I think we have a common interest that may be worth some collaboration.

[@marco4570]

Great idea and amazing execution!

[@atomic14]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@michaelkramer9014]

This is really cool !

[@udirt]

Really great application

[@qualar]

This is excellent. Would be great if the capture element could be integrated into WLED.

[@qualar]

Sorry. I see someone already made this comment.

[@atomic14]

I need to have a good look at WLED - I keep getting distracted by new shiny things :(

[@ItsJustMJ3]

Thank you so much for your demo, this is exactly what i've been trying to find for ages for xmas light control. You've got my sub!!

[@atomic14]

Thanks! It was a fun project.

[@nischal_mahadeshwar]

Most underrated channel.. hope you grow like the big guys

[@atomic14]

Thanks! Slowly getting there :)

[@mikewurlitzer5217]

BRILLIANT! KUDOS! A great lesson in machine learning.

[@atomic14]

Glad you liked it!

[@Fifury161]

Nice work - thanks for sharing!

[@alexcotton4658]

I found treasure today. Great videos here on this channel

[@atomic14]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@bserking]

Super awesome! You already did what I was thinking about lasting time I hang our Christmas tree. There is a commercial product called Twinkly which gave me the thoughts....but yeah man great work! Many thank to you PS: came from reddit....

[@atomic14]

No worries - I've done a little bit of work to make it work with just a phone camera so all you need is an ESP32.

[@LonchsThings]

@@atomic14 hi atomic!! I am amazed with this work!! You mentioned you changed it to work with a phone camera?? I would really be interested in learning that!! I have been dreaming about doing something like this for years! Can you point me where to look?

[@atomic14]

@@LonchsThings Hi Jose - in the GitHub repo there's a folder called `frontend` - there's a Makefile that will build this and upload it to the ESP32 board. The firmware runs a little web server and will serve the front end. There is a bit of problem though as to access the phone's camera you need to be using https. I used a service called ngrok to proxy the requests which gives you an https connection. You can also serve the front end from your desktop computer - just run "yarn serve" in the frontend folder of the repo. You will still need to use ngrok to get an https address for your phone.

[@LonchsThings]

@@atomic14 many thanks!!! I will give it a try and let you know if it worked! Are you open for questions?

[@atomic14]

@@LonchsThings Sure - any issues just open them on the GitHub repo and I'll try and help. It may take me a day or so as I'm juggling a few things at the same time.

[@tyandgigbuilds8836]

Very interesting this is giving me some ideas for potential builds. Thanks for sharing really love the thought process

[@atomic14]

Thanks! Good luck with the builds.

[@bld86]

What a smart original project. Great job!

[@atomic14]

Thank you!

[@ArtsyEngineering]

Damn this is great! Nice work!

[@atomic14]

Thanks, really like your videos as well.

[@ArtsyEngineering]

atomic14 thank you so much! Maybe we can work together on something sometime? Looks like we have a lot of the same interests.

[@AndresLeonSalas]

This is great, please keep up your amazing work. Subscribed!

[@werneckpaiva]

Amazing work!! Congratz!!!

[@atomic14]

Thanks a lot!

[@andycrask3531]

Awesome project and just what I'm looking for, Thanks for sharing. New subscriber here 😁

[@jone1jone145]

Hope 2118 is 2811 and not a problem. Great work!

[@atomic14]

Yes - complete brain fart on my part!

[@cwhiii]

Very fantastic!

[@atomic14]

Glad you like it!

[@JasonWho]

Wow, adding my voice to the chorus of folks proposing 3D mapping. Maybe with manual depth adjustments but ideally using brightness of the light and maybe multiple perspectives? Maybe there are Halloween or Thanksgiving LED projects that could be practiced on ;)

[@atomic14]

I've been wondering if you know the underlying 3D shape - e.g. a Christmas tree could be modelled as a simple cone then you might be able to do something quite effective. Definitely something to think about.

[@Synaesthesia99]

True WIZARDRY! :-O

[@ColmiYveul]

Oooooh that's clever !

[@noahagnew6517]

This is awesome

[@atomic14]

Thank you - it works surprisingly well for such a simple algorithm.

[@JWSmythe]

That's an interesting way to do it.

[@atomic14]

Thanks - I'm glad you like it.

[@ashutoshmohanty]

That's cool.

[@woofcaptain8212]

Pretty amazing!

[@atomic14]

Thanks!

[@iSuperMC]

This is amazing.

[@neilc.633]

Very cool and exactly what I'm looking to do -- any chance this can be adapted to work with a smartphone camera for ease of access and use?

[@forrestallison1879]

many of these LEDs don't actually need 5 volt logic to work, as long as you use a lower supply voltage as well. By supplying 4.2 volts max, I was able to control a massive string of LEDs on 3.3 volts

[@atomic14]

I think you are correct. I was having some really bad problems with the LEDs flickering or showing the wrong colours. I think in the end it may have just been the library I was using. I tried putting a diode in series with the LED power supply and it didn't seem to make much difference, Switching the library I was using to FastLeds, adding the level shifter and changing the pin I was using made the problem go away - by that point I'd changed quite a lot so pinpointing the exact problem felt like a lot of work and I was just glad to have it working stably!

[@HartWelles]

@@atomic14 Yeah I just use a 3.7V LiPo for all of my projects and while it's not as bright as providing the full 5V it works fine for my application :)

[@dudel7557]

Awesome :)

[@atomic14]

Thanks 😁

[@ajilful]

This is so amazing, thanks very much for tutorial, I am thinking of a mobile UI so that we can draw frames and animate after the scan similar to Twinkly, that's a commercial version I saw.

[@atomic14]

That's a great idea! I did build a very basic web UI for the project. One issue I had was speed of the webserver. It seemed to be quite slow updating the LEDs.

[@tonib8352]

Uooooooouuuu....this is amaizing

[@tonib8352]

How many leds can be controlled with this? project

[@atomic14]

@@tonib8352 You can chain the LED strings together, multiple times, but you might need to inject power every so often. My next project using this technique will have 200 LEDs. The main limits are RAM and how much time you have to write out all the data. There's an interesting discussion here: github.com/FastLED/FastLED/issues/288

[@tonib8352]

@@atomic14 thank you so much

[@tonib8352]

@@atomic14 Hello, your idea is amazing and I already told you in a previous post. I'm not very good at these things but the idea of ​​doing something like that on my home wall makes me excited. I wanted to ask you if you are willing to do the programming for me with my pc via team viewer or similar, obviously upon payment in advance if you want. i currently have an arduino r3 and 200 led ws2812b. I saw that you managed to make it work also through the phone camera so without esp32 cam. let me know please.

[@tonib8352]

Hello, your idea is amazing and I already told you in a previous post. I'm not very good at these things but the idea of ​​doing something like that on my home wall makes me excited. I wanted to ask you if you are willing to do the programming for me with my pc via team viewer or similar, obviously upon payment in advance if you want. i currently have an arduino r3 and 200 led ws2812b. I saw that you managed to make it work also through the phone camera so without esp32 cam. let me know please.

[@richms]

How about 2 esp modules and hitting a 3d shape from 2 sides like a sphere or tree with them all over it?

[@atomic14]

I've been thinking about that for the Christmas tree - I think it should be possible to map the LEDs onto a cone shape. I think for simple shapes the mapping should be reasonably straightforward. There's probably a lot of work already been done by motion capture guys.

[@Lampje83]

If you map the camera positions and target position into a 3D space, then you can construct a ray from the found 2D position and do a simple ray-ray intersection test. Because of measurement error and camera invariances, the rays would probably miss, but for this low-resolution application I think it's accurate enough when you find the nearest position between the two rays. I'm not an expert, but I think the mathematics aren't too complicated.

[@MarioSalasEspinoza]

I am trying to replicate this project with 500 leds. Wish me luck, only waiting for the esp32 to arrive.

[@sjude68]

where do I get the working firmware. I complied for github but cannot get it working.

[@atomic14]

Can you raise an issue on GitHub? It's a while since I looked at the project so will need to refresh myself how it all works.

[@leef_me8112]

> All the code is on GitHub Where is the link?

[@atomic14]

Ooops - sorry - here you go - github.com/atomic14/self-organising-leds I've updated the description as well. Thanks for pointing it out!

[@tstill1988]

Wow. Christmas will be fun this year! Are you aware of WLED? If there is a way to integrate this into wled would awesome

[@atomic14]

I’d not heard of WLED before - looks really interesting!

[@dripdropdripping]

Awesome! would be amazing if it could work with WLED From Aircookie!

[@atomic14]

Planning on taking a look - got another project brewing that I need to get finished first...

[@dripdropdripping]

@@atomic14 thank you so much, really appreciate it, i know alot of people will be happy to hear that! Are you making a video on your current project? You got me curious heh. Anyway keep up the good work 😊

[@led_man]

@@atomic14 any updates?

[@atomic14]

@@led_man I've not had time to look properly - I was hoping someone might take the code and do it :)

[@led_man]

@@atomic14 there is a section about 2D/3D mapping in the Wled Discord Server. Maybe you can join here if you want. I’d like to take the code but I’m a newbie in coding and don’t know how to do that. :(