Introduction

LED System is a simple and easy to use lighting management software. It offers a wide variety of effects, from simple fading to colors that change according to the rhythm of the music or according to the content we are watching on the screen. With LED System you can finally give a touch of color to your room.

Demo

A demo video showing the execution of the spectrum effect in all the 9 available configurations connected via LAN:

Configuration

Step 1. Build the circuit

The first thing to do is to build the circuit that will drive the led strip. In fact, a microcontroller like arduino is not able to supply a voltage higher than 5V from the pins, and if we have to drive a strip that uses 12V we would need a little help. The circuit we are going to make uses 4 NPN BJT transistors with the capacity of pulse width modulation (or PWM), each of these for a different color component (Alpha, Red, Green, Blue). To limit the current on the transistor also use a 1kΩ resistor at the base that goes to arduino. The circuit to build is shown in the image below:

NOTE: This circuit is only necessary if you are using lights that require a voltage higher than 5V or that require a large current consumption that the arduino ports cannot handle. If you use a simple RGB LED instead, connect it directly to the arduino pins without using any transistor.

This circuit is made to manage only one LED strip, but as we know LED System is able to manage more than one. So if we want to connect more than one LED strip it will be enough to replicate the circuit in the image (so use 4 transistors for each LED strip) but using different pins on arduino.

Step 2. Upload the code

Once the circuit is finished, we can move to uploading the code on the arduino. LED System supports connection to arduino via serial port (USB) or via the W5500 ethernet module (LAN). Choose which of the two scripts to load based on the type of method you want to use. If you want to use the LAN method you need to download the 'Ethernet2'' library. For both options it is mandatory to download the 'SoftPWM' library. The instructions to configure the various pins are present as comment directly in the script.

Step 3. Start the program

Once the code has been uploaded to the Arduino, it will be sufficient to start LED System and set the connection parameters according to the previously selected connection method. If you use the USB connection it will be sufficient to select the serial port of the arduino, if instead you are using the LAN connection it will be sufficient to enter the IP address of the W5500 module and the listening port. It is also mandatory to enter the number of LED Strips used indicated as 'lights'.

Avaible effects

LED System offers eight effects to choose from, but only a few of them have support for multiple lights, thus allowing you to make the most of them. Those who do not have support for multiple lights will treat them all as one big light.

License

This software uses the third-party libraries listed below :

Download

Choose a download option :