Smart Christmas Lights Without the App! Controlling Twinkly Strings with XLED & Home Assistant

[@camerongray1515]

Buy on Amazon (Affiliate): geni.us/7G37dK

[@morganyodts1375]

The 50/50 split is for power injection. The larger bundles they sell i think are per 3 addressable using 12v. Going DIY is an easy beginner project. WLED is amazing and i am happy to deal with the bulkier 200 WS2811 leds with green cable and power injection

[@__Ben]

Interesting that the mac address of the device starts 24:4c:ab as that's an Espressif OUI -- guess it's just an ESP32 inside...

[@camerongray1515]

You're correct, it is an ESP32, I planned to open it up and show this on video but I stupidly put the lights on the tree first and couldn't easily get the controller open afterwards to show it on camera. That said, as far as I'm aware, the LEDs themselves appear to be propriatery and seem to receive both power and data over 2 wires rather than the 3 you'd normally use for WS2812 type LEDs so I'm not sure if they'd be usable if you were to flash other firmware to the ESP.

[@rickwookie]

I doubt the 50/50 cable split is anything to do with signal integrity over the number of LEDs, because they also do a 600 LED string, where each half has more than the total number of LEDs in that pack. I think it’s just to give more flexibility (e.g. easy to wire to two small shrubs side by side. I found it easy to wire the two halves around my Christmas tree in a sort of double-helix manner.

[@EgonSpengler1977]

Can I ask what’s your electric bill each month with your server rack etc ..I thinking of moving my office site lab into my garage due to the cost of my stores location but I get free power there , do you have your server cabinet running 24/7 etc …

[@camerongray1515]

For your own decisions, you'd really need to measure the power consumption of your own equipment and calculate the cost based on your own energy tariff as well as factoring in any energy savings that could be made by upgrading to more efficient hardware and the break-even times for such upgrades. As for my bills, probably around £100-120/mo but bear in mind this is everything, not just servers, based on the UK's currently ridiculously high energy prices and I work from home so I'm using energy most of the time. Both my servers and network kit do run 24/7 but they're all relatively modern, power efficient devices with both servers being relatively basic single CPU machines. I'd expect all servers and networking kit to cost under £50/mo in total based on current prices.

[@monishbiswas1966]

Have you seen the Matt Parker / Stand Up Maths video titled 'I wired my tree with 500 LED lights and calculated their 3D coordinates.'? I assume this was the DIY version you mentioned?

[@VW_Fan]

Another great video! Thanks for taking the time!

[@michaeltryl]

I'm looking at twinkly strings that I want to hang along the house. The plan is to use it for e.g. Christmas lights, but also lights at the front door when movement is detected. Is it correctly understood that I can set up a scene on twinkly so that only a certain section (eg above the front door) lights up. That scene can then be switched on via HA when motion is detected

[@wscottfunk]

Seems like a lot of work to get them to run scenes. Why not create a dummy gmail account and sign up the twinkly app using that? Once you have all the desired scenes saved, disconnect the lights/app from the cloud.

[@camerongray1515]

The app is definitely easier, but this project was more of a point of principle. I don't have an issue with using my email address for an account, my issue is that if Twinkly ever go out of business, it will no longer be possible to log into the app and therefore it would no longer be possible to configure the lights. Requiring an account isn't just a privacy/data mining concern, it has real implications for long term usability of a product.

[@wscottfunk]

​@@camerongray1515that makes sense. Thanks for your explanation and reply!

[@adamcoffee738]

Pixels

[@greg794]

Stop speaking so fast :/ I love your content.