The Power is Mine

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Today I ordered the final component for the "Wall of Lights" project. I've decided that it is worth getting proper devices where mains is concerned so I've plumped for a nice little Mean Well power supply that can deliver 20 amps at 5 volts. This should be comfortable with the 300 or so coloured leds that I'm going to be plugging into it as part of the Light Mesh project. With a a bit of luck it should arrive in the next couple of days. I'm hoping to get the thing going before christmas. 

Coloured Lights for Christmas

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I've got a plan for the Christmas lights this year. On the amazing AliExpress website I found a listing for 50 pre-soldered WS812B leds in a strand for the amazing prize of around 12 quid. Post free. These are the same devices that I used in the hugely successful Wedding Lights earlier in the year. So it was out with the credit card and away I go. What could go wrong?

The plan is to make a mesh of them for the living room. I've even got permission from number one wife to hang them up. I've found this thing called FadeCandy that I can use to control them, although for testing at the moment I'm making do with an Arduino I happen to have lying around.  

Eventually I want to learn how to use Processing (a very interesting language that looks great fun) to put lo-res images and other stuff up on the wall. 

Step 1 is to make some enclosures for the lights. As supplied they are just soldered onto cable. I've come up with Version 1.0 above, which is a simple cube of white PLA along with a base that just snaps onto the back. I had a happy hour this morning designing them and test printing them and they seem to look OK. 

Step 2 will be to hang a strand downstairs and see how they look. Great fun, and much more interesting than all the other things I really should be doing. But hey, it is Sunday after all.