Over at Tinkerlog, they’ve been playing with that super cheap, yet super powerful micro-computer Raspberry Pi. With multi-coloured LEDs becoming increasingly more common in commercial and residential interior design, wouldn’t be it great if you had a way to control them exactly the way you want.
In a video Alex Weber, also of Make Magazine, shows off his creation. He took a string of RGB LEDs (Adafruit RGB pixel – WS2801), and connected it to a connected Raspberry Pi. Thanks to a bit of Node.js magic, he’s able to control the colours of individual LEDs at the click of a mouse. The coding also allows for groups to be selected, then a colour applied. We then see the same application operated via an iPhone app which kicks off an animated light sequence.
The possibilities here are endless, with the cost of the lights being higher than the controller (Raspberry Pi). The lights also have a library up on github for those developers amongst you to communicate with the hardware. Because the commands are broadcast via web sockets, colour changes updates the lights on all connected clients.
This has huge potential for multiple installations around your house or business. If you scale this up, you could have a computer / phone controlled lighting scheme for your Christmas decorations. Or you may want to add some scheduling or add some motion detection for lighting around the home.
More information @ Tinkerlog
