CheerLights node-red edition

A couple days ago I found my DigiPixel so I started thinking what quick project I could use it for and remembered CheerLights. I gave away my Ethernet shield to a friend and never got around to buy another one so I decided to have it connected to my laptop and get data using Serial through USB. I quickly wrote a sketch to do just this but since I didn't want the DigiPixel to stay on all the time I started to modify it to turn off after a while and then back on for a few seconds. While messing with the code node-red came to mind and I realized 2 things: first, I don't need to modify the code on the Arduino (and having to do it again and again if I decided to change the behavior, like different ON/OFF timeouts), I can leave the sketch simple as it was and implement the behavior I wanted in the node-red flow; second, I can run the flow on my RasPi which uses wifi to connect to my home network and for which I also have a battery so my project becomes "wireless".

A quick search revealed this @Cheerlights to various RGB devices example flow (thanks dceejay!) which is exactly what I needed it. Started my RasPi, deployed the flow, replaced the blink device with a serial node connected to my Arduino and I was done! After I "deployed" the project in my living room and my son started to ask me why there is no light I realized that if the CheerLights color doesn't change for a long time, the DigiPixel doesn't show anything so I tweaked the flow a little bit to wake up every 2 minutes and show the last known color and if there is no last known color just use some color to start things off; the result is here, not as good and generic as the original flow but exactly what I needed.

My setup is a bit more complex than it needs to be because I am using a Raspberry Pi A which has only one USB: since I need USB for both the wifi dongle and to communicate with the Arduino, I used a hub (it doesn't need power, the Pi power supply is good enough to power both the dongle and the Arduino).

node-red is indeed amazing: the amount of changes that can be made in short time and the ability to swap out nodes for different ones very easily (I could decide to replace my Arduino+DigiPixel with some other device and probably be up and running in a matter of minutes or an hour at the most), make it an awesome tool that will very likely be used more and more in the IoT world. I'm repeating myself but I simply love it and can't be thanking enough to its authors!