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  • Author Author: kartben
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Controlling Holiday Lights using MQTT and the Arduino Yún

kartben

To all the Element14 members interested in participating to the Internet of Holiday Lights roadtest, and more generally to anyone who'd like to play with the Arduino Yún for building Internet of Things applications, this video is for you!
It gives you a very brief introduction on how you can turn an RGB LED strip that you can get on Amazon or eBay for ~25USD, into a remotely controlled IoT device using MQTT, the Eclipse IoT free broker, and an Arduino Yún!

 

 

The MQTT library for the Arduino is from Eclipse Paho but includes a fix that is not yet merged, so in the meantime you should probably use the library available here.

The code for the Arduino and Web applications is on Github.

 

Please do not hesitate to comment if you have any questions or if you want to share the ideas you may have to improve this little experiment!

  • in reply to alexev

    I would still be tending toward the issue Benjamin Cabé suggested, I have been using code based on the sample he kindly provided and have not experienced these issues

     

    it can be surprising how much current even a few LEDs can draw

  • in reply to kartben

    hmm, don't think so, i've tested it with 12vDC/800mA transformer and only 30 led's/50cm strip, don't have yet a dc transformer over 1A so i can use one whole 5m strip to test. The application works fine (especially colour transition ring) as long as i keep away from extreme values like maximum/minimum lighting power from the square. The RGB strip is a simple one, each led with it's own colour (x3 colours).

  • in reply to alexev

    Sounds like your power supply might not be beefy enough?

  • in reply to kartben

    Thank you, your project worked after days of getting to the problem (yun not accessible by ip, router configuration, antivirus/firewall port testing etc.). After testing it on android and windows, i've noticed a bug (i don't know whether it's from the programming or the infineon's i2c protocol or i2c of yun , but when i toggle the square to the lowest intensity of lighting and then back on to maximum, the application crashes and becomes nonresponsive untill resetting booth yun and infineon shield (power cut). It's a nice application and i will try to improve it to do include automatic lighting too with the author's permission of course image.

  • in reply to kartben

    All very good points but having deployment options is a good thing which is why I posted a zip with the complete package that can be hosted wherever is convenient . Hosting the files on the YUN is not about where their hosted, just about a convenient place to put them for the home hobbyist. For home use, it has some benefits as any html5 capable device can pull the page and control the system in the home without having to expose the test system to the internet and all the nasties that await the unwary traveller image and you don't have to get to grips with GITHUB or other internet based applications. There all good options but not for all people

     

    MQTT is a great protocol and works well in an intranet as well as the Internet and of course is more than able to bridge the two, if your only going to have a single node then yes, a bit of overkill but if your planning on running many home nodes, having an MQTT broker as part of the master controller makes a lot of sense to me, easy to set-up, easy to integrate , easy to scale out and libraries exist for many small systems as the eclipse foundation supports and demonstrates so well and clearly

     

    leverage the eclipse.org sand box is great but knowing how to host your own provides so many more options to the developer