LightshowPi ESP8266 branch

I came across this project last year and had a lot of fun with it. I built the control box with mechanical relays, 4-gang outlet box and 8 channels of light control goodness. This year we were spreading the lights out even more and I wanted to distribute the control over Wi-Fi using the ESP8266 modules. Here is a rundown of what I have changed and the hardware / software that I used to make the light show this year.

This is a lightshowpi for that changes the networking portion of the program.

Possibly broken items

• Flash and individual testing
• Use of RPi GPIO pins and networking together.

Items used in my setup

• Software
  • lightshowpi - of course
  • Hostapd
  • Mopidy
  • Busybox uDHCP server
• Hardware (If you dont mind pure chineseium)
  • Raspberrypi 3 - not chineseium
  • ESP8266
  • 5V 4 Channel OMRON SSR
  • WinnerEco 3000mW wireless card. RaLink3070 Chipset

Items to be addressed

When I threw this together it wasn't really well thought out.. Christmas was coming!! So here are some thoughts on software - things I may have broke and things I would like to add.

networking.py

The edits I made here changed the numpy array into a python list which then gets dumped into a json array for transmission across the network. The json array doesn't get byte encoded before transmission, but it seems to work fine'ish. Plus I didn't want to deal with the endian'ness of the two different systems. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a direct translation between the 8266 and RPi.

Using json in this way allows us to use any networked endpoint that we want to control the lights

hardware_controller.py

The hardware controller, I'm not sure here, but it seems to send a single packet while doing the "flash" test. There is a lot that didn't get tested while I was trying to make things work.

Running as root?

I understand this thing is only running for a couple of weeks during December, but mine is connected to the internet and has a Wi-Fi AP running on it.. Leaves me feeling kind of exposed in a cool breeze.. Lets see if we can find a way to start elevated then drop back to an unprivileged user.

Original README.md contents below this point

http://lightshowpi.org/

All files here are free to use under the BSD License (see the LICENSE file for details). All we ask in return is that you send any updates / improvements you may make to them back to us so that we can all benefit from your improvements!

Join us on our Google+ community page and / or Facebook page as well to share your experiences using lightshowPi, as well as videos of your shows!

Thanks, and enjoy ;)

Todd Giles ([email protected])

Installation / Getting Started

Please visit the Getting Started Page for details on getting started. Or for those who want to just jump on in, feel free to run the install.sh script and go for it :-)

Directory Structure

• bin/* - Various bash scripts / tools to aid in playing songs, controlling volume, etc...
• config/* - Configuration files.
• crontab/synchronized_lights - Add these via 'sudo crontab -e' to start / stop the lightshow automatically
• logs/* - Log files will be output here.
• music/* - Music files go here (includes some samples to get you started).
• py/* - All the python code.
• tools/* - Various tools helpful in configuring / using / etc... LightshowPi

Contributors

A huge thanks to all those that have contributed to the Lightshow Pi codebase:

• Todd Giles
• Chris Usey
• Ryan Jennings
• Sean Millar
• Scott Driscoll
• Micah Wedemeyer
• Chase Cromwell
• Bruce Goheen
• Paul Dunn
• Stephen Burning
• Eric Higdon
• Tom Enos
• Brandon Lyon
• Ken B (K5ENB)
• Paul Barnett
• Anthony Tod
• Brent Reinhard

Release Notes

2017/10/27 :: Version 1.3

• Added initial support for controlling individually controllable RGB LED lights (thanks to Tom Enos, Ken B, and Chris Usey)
• Addition of the "microweb" UI for controlling your lightshow (thanks to Ken B)
• Twitter support, tweeting current song playing (thanks to Brent Reinhard and Ken B)
• Various bug-fixes and updates to support latest kernel versions (thanks to Ken B)

2016/10/16 :: Version 1.2

• 3 to 4 times speed improvement by utilizing GPU for fft and other optimizations (thanks to Tom Enos, Colin Guyon, and Ken B)
• support for streaming audio from pandora, airplay, and other online sources (thanks to Tom Enos and Ken B)
• support fm broadcast on the pi2 and pi3 (thanks to Ken B)
• multiple refactors + addition of comments to the code + clean-up (thanks to Tom Enos)
• add the ability to override configuration options on a per-song basis (thanks to Tom Enos)
• support pagination for the SMS 'list' command (thanks to Brandon Lyon)
• support for running lightshow pi on your linux box for debugging (thanks to Micah Wedemeyer)
• addition of new configuration parameters to tweak many facets of the way lights blink / fade (thanks to Ken B)
• addition of new configuration parameters to tweak standard deviation bounds used (thanks to Paul Barnett)
• support a "terminal" mode for better debugging w/out hardware attached (thanks to Anthony Tod)
• many other misc bug fixes (see Issues list for more details)

2014/11/27 :: Version 1.1

• piFM support (thanks to Stephen Burning)
• audio-in support (thanks to Paul Dunn)
• command line play-list generator (thanks to Eric Higdon)
• enhancements to preshow configuration, including per-channel control (thanks to Chris Usey)
• support for expansion cards, including mcp23s17,mcp23017 (thanks to Chris Usey)
• updated to support RPi B+ (thanks to Chris Usey)
• clarification on comments and in-code documentation (thanks to Bruce Goheen, Chase Cromwell, and Micah Wedemeyer)
• other misc bug fixes (see Issues list for more details)

2014/02/16 :: Version 1

• First "stable" release