Seconding WLED, it's fantastic. Super easy to install and operate, compatible with HomeAssistant, the built in effects are great, the web app / native mobile apps are powerful but straightforward, and the community offers plenty of help and other resources.

It also supports DMX input (sACN or Art-Net) for designing and controlling complex effects from external software.

Warning: don’t buy an ESP32-C6 for this. It’s not compatible with WLED/ESPHome/etc and it isn’t clear whether/when this will be resolved.

I strongly suggest not buying any electronic components from Amazon, but 5VDC LED light strings should be OK.

Do not roll the dice on the power supply, buy a UL listed one. If you buy some shitty Chinese PSU and it lights your house on fire, your homeowners insurance will deny the claim.

This one puts out 30w @ 5VDC and is also UL listed: https://poliledsigns.com/shop/poli-5vdc-30w-waterproof-led-p...

Even though it says ‘waterproof’, it needs to be installed in an enclosure, NEMA 3R rated enclosure if it’s installed outdoors.

This is some major myth. Crack open your insurance policy — it’s not going to say “UL listed appliances only” or anything like that. Insurance also covers mistakes.

But you should get a good power supply anyway because the hassle is not worth it.

My bad on perpetuating the myth regarding homeowner’s insurance and UL listing, I appreciate the correction.

You’d need to read what the policy has to say about uninspected electrical work performed by or at the direction of the homeowner. If you use a hardwired power supply, non-UL/cUL equipment won’t pass an inspection [0]. You can bypass the inspection by using a cord and plug 120V rectifier which wouldn’t need to be UL listed since it wouldn’t need an inspection.

[0] NEC Section 110.3(c): https://up.codes/s/examination-identification-installation-u...

> 110.3 (C) Listing Product testing, evaluation, and listing (product certification) shall be performed by recognized qualified electrical testing laboratories and shall be in accordance with applicable product standards recognized as achieving equivalent and effective safety for equipment installed [1] to comply with this Code.

[1] ‘Equipment installed’ means hardwired.

You might need permits, inspections, and to worry about code if you’re permanently wiring this into your house electrical system. If you’re doing that, you’re probably well beyond asking about Christmas lights on HN.

ESA in Ontario, for example, allows you to do your own electrical work. Self-notification, I’m sure, is a CYA formality by them.

(1) https://esasafe.com/compliance/diy-electrical-work/

Ah, good point. I was picturing this setup as hardwired.

Do you have proof that claims are denied due to power supplies not rated correctly? That seems like fear mongering otherwise. Your insurance still covers your house even if you make mistakes on construction or repair yourself, I can’t imagine them denying a claim over a purchased part that you have a good faith reason to believe it will function correctly.

Also why do you specifically call out Chinese parts as being shitty? Where do you think the majority of electronics come from? This feels like xenophobia. The power supply can be cheap and crappy and come from anywhere. Or it can be great and come from anywhere. That one you linked, by the way - Made in China.

My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward. I sincerely doubt that an insurance company would be required to cover losses due to DIY electronics using parts that have not been properly safety rated. I'm surprised you think the opposite is obvious. Could just be my US perspective.

I fully expect that if I built (or bought) a power supply, plugged it into the wall, and it caught fire due to my own negligence (unintentional), that the resulting losses to the structure would be covered. (I'm in the US.) It would seem no different than if I built a fire in the fireplace that caused the issue, had a 3D printer catch fire, or had a grease fire cause the issue.

> My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward.

I would be shocked if that's true, considering here in Texas you don't need a permit or inspection to do DIY work on your own house.

I clarified in a sibling comment, I was incorrect about UL listing being required for homeowner’s insurance but UL listing (or testing by another nationally recognized test lab) is required to pass an inspection if you’re hardwiring a piece of equipment, and fires caused by unpermitted DIY electrical work are not covered by insurance.

Amazon does not have audited supply chains. The power supply I linked is sold by Sylvania, it has a warranty, and it’s UL listed, not sold on Amazon by Xfrtteg or Psygwist. You can have quality goods manufactured in China, it’s Amazon that I don’t trust.

> Also why do you specifically call out Chinese parts as being shitty? Where do you think the majority of electronics come from?

OP is making a distinction between directly-sourced parts, versus those commissioned by a Western or Western-affiliated company that’s gone through the “trouble” of a CSA/UL certification. One is built to a price point, one is built to limit liability.

WLED is the clear answer here. I got a simple USB controller (usb just for power) so it can’t run a a massive strand of lights (at least at full brightness) but it was perfect to dip my toes in and try out.

The Home Assistant integration works great as well.

The fact that you can install the WLED firmware _from the website_ is the cherry on top. It’s a fantastic piece of software.

Agreed. There's people on HN complaining about APIs like Web USB, but I never got why. You can ship a firmware flasher as a single .html file now! No sketchy native tools or messing around with the command line, and runs on pretty much any machine.

> complaining about APIs like Web USB, but I never got why

I think that these people are not complaining about the API itself, which might be well-designed. The problem is, in my opinion, elsewhere.

It seems to me that the main reason for criticism is that having a browser perform operations on your USB port or on your Bluetooth is potentially dangerous, if you do not know what you are doing.

At the same time, the target audience of these APIs is typically the people who cannot be bothered to or are unable to use a command line tool. So, in a way, by having these APIs in the browser, a potentially dangerous tool is being put into the hands of people who may not be capable of realizing how dangerous it actually is.

I think it is fair to note that some people often do not review the scripts they download before running them, either. They just trust the source. Which might be a good-enough approach in some cases. From that point of view, having the browser run a script from a trusted website and operating a USB device is similarly safe. Or similarly unsafe.

But with a browser having this kind of capability, there are other threat models. If a scammer wants to read the user's USB devices and look for something to exploit, they can either ask the user nicely to run their probing script. Which, for better or worse, many people that may be prone to this kind of attack, would just be unable to do.

Or, an attacker might simply use the browser's API to do the same thing. And they may even present a nice guide to the user explaining how to allow it to run. It seems to me that there is more people who would be prone to falling for this kind of trick than there is people who may be tricked into and capable of running a script.

The most plug-and-play WLED-compatible controller I've found is made by athom.tech and available on AliExpress <https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1101393719>. There are two versions based on the ESP32C3. One is powered by USB-C @ 5V, and the other has a barrel jack and passes through 5-24V to the lights, which is useful if you're using a higher-voltage strip like WS2813.

I used to build my own controllers from ESP development boards, but it's just not worth it when an enclosed controller with convenient connectors is priced between $10-20.

I’m a fan of these guys:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHHZTGJR

Power is passed through from either connector, so it’ll work on 5v or 12v strings. And it’s got two output channels. It’s only an ESP8266 inside, but that works fine for my needs.

For a slightly more DIY approach, try this one:

https://wiki.vdbx.io/product/flip_c3

Has everything you need to give it some sort of power and get the requisite data signal out.

The ESP8266 is no longer recommended for WLED due to its lack of resources

If you need the upgraded performance, you can pay a bit more and get the ESP32 equivalent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4Z4YG4H/

Personally, I've found the ESP8266 version adequate in the year I've owned it.

The athom stuff is a bit annoying because they never bothered to upstream anything to support their fairly minor changes - they just forked instead. You can still install upstream WLED, but the remote control support is faffy.

The mottramlabs or QuinLED boards don't have this problem.

Good to know. I haven't needed remote control support, so when I've flashed official WLED builds, I haven't noticed any issues.

another plug-and-play pre-flashed with wled: https://magwled.com/

you can find the controller on amazon comes with usb-c for 12v and 5v and currrently using it with some BTF-LIGHTING WS2812B fairy lights

Looks like that only goes up to 15W for 5V, though, which may not be enough.

As other siblings said, they didn't upstream anything (having to install firmware from a random unmarked zip on a site is annoying), and also their controllers are badly made.

I used one for a panel I made, and it would bootloop constantly, until I added a big capacitor to the 5V rail. Pretty shoddy.

WLED is nice for 1-dimensional LED strips, or if you don't really care how the animations project on your LEDs, but anything in 2 dimension is painful, the grid mapping in 2D is just overly complicated and obscure. I barely got my simple LED matrix working and I've been doing LED grids with my own software for over 10 years (so I know how easy it can be). WLED was just an awful experience for 2D led arrays or anything more complex than a single LED strip.

Really? I connected four panels to make a display and it was a simple issue of choosing how the panels were laid out.

However, their 2D wizard might be new, so give it a shot if you haven't tried it.

Have you used it recently? The matrix configurator is much improved.

Yes I have used it recently. WLED is a joke for anything other than 1-dimensional arrays. It's the way the pixels are addressed and mapped in 2 dimensions that is the problem with WLED. It's especially difficult if your "grid" is anything but an exact square or rectangle, with skipped pixels, or multiple mapped areas, etc. I found it all to be extremely frustrating and a badly designed system. I tried WLED to see what the fuss was all about, and I was not at all impressed. I have my own LED mapping system that works with 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D pixel mapped arrays, with arbitrarily placed pixels being simple to work with. Of course this is not what WLED was designed to do, and it shows. The 2-D mapping in WLED seems like a bolted-on hack.

There is support for oddly shaped arrays but you gotta use a custom mapping function, there's a generator online for it. The discord is really helpful.

> kno.wled.ge

I want to take a moment to ackno.wled.ge how absolute awesome of a domain hack “kno.wled.ge” is for the website of a WLED project!

I used WLED and some WS2811 lights for Halloween this year, and I was blown away but how much it _just worked_. As long as I kept the order of the lights correct (there are arrows, derp), they just strung along. I ended up with a decently complicated array, but as long as my counts were good, the thing just worked. Govee is a very mainstream brand currently using WS2811-based lights, and with a little knife action, you can add them in. I'm hopeful next year to play with some 2D matrix stuff in it.

Also, since on one has mentioned it yet, the go-to LED strips are from BTF-Lighting.

I personally buy them from AliExpress since I dont care if they arrive in a week as opposed to 1-2 days from Amazon.

https://btf-lighting.aliexpress.com/store/1100777574

The missing middle appears to be tree lights that have a traditional appearance (and don’t look like robot spaghetti). Adhesive LED light strips are meant to be only indirectly visible.

These are a good stand-in: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002906547500.html

They are strip lights, but the light is mostly omnidirectional, and the strip material is flexible. If you want a dark-colored strip, which looks better on a dark-green tree, here's a non-BTF option: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805412113378.html

The colours look decent, but like you said, the conductor appears out of place.

NOMA has a “smart” line of traditionally packaged lights, but these appear to use a proprietary box: https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/cat/christmas/christmas-light...

I've had a set of these (purchased from Amazon) deployed since October and we've been happy with them. The outdoor strand is run by a QuinLED Dig-Uno board and has stood up to a lot of rain so far. The wires at the end are just flush cut short with the conductors showing, so I made some attempt to weatherproof that spot just in case.

agree