Lights app icon with light rays, as used in loading animation

Lights


making my living room a little more lively

Lights is a little web app that allows me to decide what colour my room will be. It works as a remote to a networked Arduino or Core with RGB led strips.

Getting everything to work and colours to transition smoothly and without delay was a challenge, as I had not developed software for Arduino yet and it is a relatively resource-constrained device. Additionally, it's been a playground to try light animations, weird input methods and applying contextual information such as weather and device presence.

Together with Brendan Spijkerman, who added an ambilight feature, I'm currently working to build an improved and polished version for Particle (Spark) Core and Photon.

Colour picker screen Favourite colours screen

Colours can be selected using a colour picker or from any of the saved colours. The app also allows "channels" to be set separately or together.

Particle Core connected to LED lights Strip of LED lights on wall shown in different colours

The lighting results in a great atmosphere and because we use 16 bit colours, transitions look incredibly smooth.