Published November 14, 2015 © MIT

Rpi2-Win10 IoT-Based Light Controller

Rpi2/Win10-IOT controls light fixtures made of NeoPixel or DotStar LED strips.

AdvancedWork in progress9,048

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Adafruit SN74AHCT125N

SparkFun LED RGB Strip - Addressable

Software apps and online services

Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

Story

The first idea was about making a piece of software for Rpi2 to directly control individually addressable LED strips. Then the idea to make a cute light fixture out of those LED strips came in. The remote control app made an obvious and useful add-on.

The software supports two types of LEDs - NeoPixel (WS2812B) and DotStar (APA102C) through slightly different hardware adapters.

The picture below shows two lights I made so far. The top one (LightStar) is made of NeoPixel LEDs, and the bottom one (LedPanel) is simple 8x30 matrix of DotStar LEDs. Each fixture is currently controlled by separate Rpi2.

1 / 8

I made a script demonstrating some static and dynamic shows, see the movie clip below. The script only demonstrates a few shows while controller capabilities are virtually unlimited..