Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I bricked my Christmas lights

whizzy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#31

Post by syntaxing »

eichin wrote: post #21
syntaxing wrote: post #17

Beginners question, is there a reason we can’t reverse engineer something similar for lights made by Govee? Is it because it’s WiFi and harder to MITM?

There may be an easier way, but another HN thread pointed out that you can use tailscale to make it easier to tcpdump phone apps (because you can send all of the phone traffic through an endpoint you control.) (Presumably raw wireguard is enough? I haven't tried (or seen tutorials for) either approach, it was just a "that sounds clever, save it for my next sniffer project" idea)

Whoa that’s an interesting idea, use a tailscale exit node and use tcpdump on the interface

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#32

Post by syntaxing »

brk wrote: post #24
syntaxing wrote: post #17

Beginners question, is there a reason we can’t reverse engineer something similar for lights made by Govee? Is it because it’s WiFi and harder to MITM?

I like the form factor of some of the Govee string lights. I’ve thrown out their controller and hooked them to ESP32’s with WLED. Best of both worlds that way.

This sounds amazing, do you use ESPhomr with it?! Any tutorial cause I love this idea

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#33

Post by syntaxing »

gsharma wrote: post #20
syntaxing wrote: post #17

Beginners question, is there a reason we can’t reverse engineer something similar for lights made by Govee? Is it because it’s WiFi and harder to MITM?

The Govee strips I have do support Bluetooth connectivity. In fact, that’s how they are setup initially. Your comment prompted me to search for “Govee LAN” and found HomeAssistant LAN integration. Time to dig deeper! https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/s/bppM4AR3uA

I might need to buy some and try this out, Philips hue pricing has gotten out of hand since covid

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#34

Post by averageRoyalty »

echelon wrote: post #28

I'm looking for some flexible, robust lights for my car's roof rack. I'm wondering if anyone knows a set that will fit these requirements: - Battery powered and outdoor / all weather compatible - Easy to attach the battery box to surfaces using ties - Ideally "mini" form factor ("T5") [1] - Ideally RGB and programmable. I'd like to use them for Christmas (red/green), Halloween (purple/orange), and other seasons. Does…

You can check out "bullet string" style WS2811s. They're 12v native if you're tying back to your car's 12v, usually come waterproof with xConnect pigtails, and are very attachable/flexible. They're easy to resolder with extensions and chain too:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000105913323.html

From what I've ready, they or similar 5V lights seem standard in outdoor Christmas lighting for shows.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#36

Post by mft_ »

echelon wrote: post #28

I'm looking for some flexible, robust lights for my car's roof rack. I'm wondering if anyone knows a set that will fit these requirements: - Battery powered and outdoor / all weather compatible - Easy to attach the battery box to surfaces using ties - Ideally "mini" form factor ("T5") [1] - Ideally RGB and programmable. I'd like to use them for Christmas (red/green), Halloween (purple/orange), and other seasons. Does…

Your direction depends (I guess) on how much DIY effort you're willing to put in?

For example, you can get 12v LED strips which are IP67 (waterproof inside a silicon tube) pretty easily [0] and which would probably give a much more impressive effect than a string of Christmas-style lights, due to having lots more LEDs to play with.

However, you'd need to do the leg-work of also buying and programming a micro-controller (something like an Arduino, ESP32, or ESP8266 [1]) and figuring out how to power them from your car battery. You could probably house all of the electronics inside the car and just run wires out of the boot, relying on the existing boot seal to keep everything waterproof.

[0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004289391906.html [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005977505151.html

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#37

Post by MegaDeKay »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #8

Power supply failure? The WS281x things can go really bright, and, in bulk, suck an awful lot of current. A 12V, 3A power supply on a strip of 100 is just about enough to drive them all to full bright white, and dazzlingly bright it is. So I'd look for a blown fuse. The fact that the firmware only drives them to 31 out of a possible maximum brightness of 255 offers a clue.

These don't appear to be WS2812. Look at the Ali link he posted. There is a pic of the wires that show four conductors on the strip: 12V, red, green, and blue. I think this is an analog RGB strip where are the lights in the strip are the same color vs. individually addressible.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005485885067.html

Anybody wanting to do anything with LED lighting owes it to themselves to look at WLED. Lots of built in effects, web gui, super cheap ESP32 (or ESP 8266!) as the controller, sound-reactive, etc etc etc. WLED is running my indoor Christmas lights right now and they look great.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#38

Post by green-salt »

wkjagt wrote: post #10
green-salt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this super similar (ESP32) with a set I got from walmart. Works great!

I find it amazing to think that your Christmas lights are now way more powerful than my first computer.

I think about stuff like this a lot, like what technologies I'm (ab)using to do some silly gadget thing.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#39

Post by MegaDeKay »

echelon wrote: post #28

I'm looking for some flexible, robust lights for my car's roof rack. I'm wondering if anyone knows a set that will fit these requirements: - Battery powered and outdoor / all weather compatible - Easy to attach the battery box to surfaces using ties - Ideally "mini" form factor ("T5") [1] - Ideally RGB and programmable. I'd like to use them for Christmas (red/green), Halloween (purple/orange), and other seasons. Does…

Join the WLED Discord and look in the #projects and #showcase channels. There are lots of projects with people outfitting their vehicle with RGB LED lights. Just beware that it is really easy to get hooked on this stuff!

Here's an invite: https://discord.gg/eVhhh2Wh

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#40

Post by organsnyder »

willcooke wrote: post #6
CTOSian wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can still use them as dummy/classic lights if you bypass the controller

+1 I can just swap the micro controller with something like an ESP8266 and run WLED.

I bought a big spool of addressable lights from Aliexpress and hooked them up to an ESP32. Took some soldering and other hacking, but they’re really, really, nice.
Post reply on HN