14/12/20
Last year, for Christmas, I recieved a reel of LED strips. I decided that I was going to put them to use as ambient lighting in my room. My plan was not just to make them regular lights with a switch, but to use an IoT device to control them, create custom animations, and be able to toggle them from my PC. After some thought, I decided to use a Particle Photon for this task, as it was well suited and also was what I had lying around already.

This code allowed me to make API calls to the particle API in order to do things like turn on the lights, change their animation and pause the animation.After I did this, I installed the particle CLI so that I could make these calls from the command line. I did a test and voila, working web-enabled lighting! In myexcitement, I made some simple batch files, stuck them on my desktop and had some lights I could be proud of. Featuring 3 animations, a red scrolling effect that reminded me of The Matrix, hence the name, as well as a fairy lights effect, and a simple static orange for when I'm not wanting them to look so flashy. The code as well as a simple batch file to control the lights is below. If you want to see them in action, click here!

/**
 * This is a minimal example, see extra-examples.cpp for a version
 * with more explantory documentation, example routines, how to
 * hook up your pixels and all of the pixel types that are supported.
 *
 * On Photon, Electron, P1, Core and Duo, any pin can be used for Neopixel.
 *
 * On the Argon, Boron and Xenon, only these pins can be used for Neopixel:
 * - D2, D3, A4, A5
 * - D4, D6, D7, D8
 * - A0, A1, A2, A3
 *
 * In addition on the Argon/Boron/Xenon, only one pin per group can be used at a time.
 * So it's OK to have one Adafruit_NeoPixel instance on pin D2 and another one on pin
 * A2, but it's not possible to have one on pin A0 and another one on pin A1.
 */

#include "Particle.h"
#include "neopixel.h"

SYSTEM_MODE(AUTOMATIC);

// IMPORTANT: Set pixel COUNT, PIN and TYPE
#define PIXEL_PIN D0
#define PIXEL_COUNT 90
#define PIXEL_TYPE WS2812B

Adafruit_NeoPixel strip(PIXEL_COUNT, PIXEL_PIN, PIXEL_TYPE);


int LED = D0;

int cycleCounter = 0;

int greenValue = 0;
int redValues[PIXEL_COUNT];
int greenValues[PIXEL_COUNT];
int blueValues[PIXEL_COUNT];
bool rising[PIXEL_COUNT];

bool animate = true;
int animationId = 2;
bool switchedOff = false;



#define MAX_INTENSITY 128
#define STEP_VALUE 1
#define SKIP_CYCLES 1
// SKIP_CYCLES = 1 for the matrix




void setup()
{

    initTheMatrix(0);
    //initTwinkleColor(32,32,0);

    strip.begin();
    strip.show(); // Initialize all pixels to 'off'
    pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);
    
    bool success = Particle.function("Pause", funcPause);
    bool success2 = Particle.function("ChangeAnimation", funcChangeAnimation);
    bool success3 = Particle.function("Off", funcOff);
}


int funcPause(String extra) {
    if (animate == true) {
        animate = false;
    }else {
        animate = true;
    }
  return 0;
}


int funcChangeAnimation(String extra) {
    
    // animationId +=1;
    // if (animationId == 3) { animationId == 0;}
    
    animate = false;
    
    switch (animationId) {
        case 0: // Matrix
            initTwinkleColor(32, 32, 0);
            animationId = 1;
            break;
        case 1: // Twinkle
            animationId=2;
            break;
        case 2: // AllRGB
            initTheMatrix(0);
            animationId=0;
            break;
    }
    
    animate = true;
    
    return 0;
}

int funcOff(String extra) {
    if (switchedOff == true) {
        switchedOff = false;
        initAnimation();
    }else {
        switchedOff = true;
        turnOffAll();
    }
  return 0;
}

void turnOffAll() {
    
        int loop;
        for(loop=0;loop

//Batch File for Particle CLI control
@echo off
echo "Lights toggled."
particle function call lights Off