Light Show Maker

A simple solution to make a Light Show for Christmas, or even room lights.

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Inspiration

I always enjoy driving through neighborhoods with these really cool radio-based individually addressable lights. I figured why not give it a shot on a much smaller scale, but a goal is to bring this to my house next holiday season for others to enjoy!

What it does

Essentially you can make light shows that the computer runs through to match the lights to music or whatever else you want to display your awesome cool new lights. The main coding portion is about the dashboard used to control the project. This dashboard is used to interface with different song programs. You can easily create, edit, delete and, most importantly, play shows from here.

How it works

The code works by having a server(raspberry pi) send out commands over the internet to each hub, each hub controls a light strand. There is only one in this case. The server has a stored set of commands it runs through to create the show. It has commands to tell which hub, and the corresponding IP address. The user creates each of their own shows with the advanced dashboard to control lighting and timing.

Challenges we ran into

It was hard learning how to manipulate the CSV file to store the correct data. That is something I have never done before. It was also hard mapping out the backend of the server and where to send all the get requests too. Keeping this code clean, simple, and expandable was very important to me.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting a show complete in just 24 hours using the advanced dashboard I made. I am also proud that you can create the entire light show without needing to leave the site, there is no external tools involved it is all coded by me. I am very happy with how clean and efficient my code was.

What we learned

I learned how to quickly solve the small problems in my head and create advanced sites with python and flask. Working with different requests and having interactive sites to this degree is very new to me.

What's next for Light Show Maker

For the whole idea, the goal is to hang these up on my house and broadcast music to an FM radio station for people to drive by during Christmas. For the coding specifically, I want to add much more advanced features such as being able to blink or more advanced sequences. It also needs to have many individual strips connected and individually control.

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