0 comments The controller software lives here on github. My current software development environment is Visual Studio Code with Platform IO installed on top of it. It’s quite a bit better than the Arduino IDE for my usage patterns. I’ve done my best to build a flexible and well-abstracted design. With the exception of main.cpp, all of […]
0 comments In our last installment, we were trying to decide whether to hand-wire the controller or to go with the PC board. The PC board won out handily since it only cost $13.30 for the standard 3 boards from OSHPark. Here’s a picture of the board with populated with the 3 MOSFETs and 5 resistors. I […]
0 comments My original plan for the controller was to do all the wiring by hand on a perfboard (“old school”); it’s not that complicated and I wouldn’t need to wait for a board. But I decided to do a pcb board to see how much it would cost and because I wanted an excuse to try […]
0 comments I’ve done a lot more work on the backyard controller design and things have firmed up. Here’s what it looks like. First, I don’t think the 100 watt power supply I bought is going to cut it; I have 36 watts on the ground and 40 watts on the house, and we’ve added tree accent […]
0 comments We’re in the process of doing some new landscaping in our back yard, and that involves a small fountain and some landscape lighting. Which of course brings up the question obvious question: How are you going to control the fountain and the lighting? Here are some initial requirements: There are three separate circuits of control; […]
3 comments I’m starting a new decorations project that will involve a fair number of standard LEDs, but not addressable ones. I have a few different use scenarios: Plug into a standard USB power supply. Power directly with 120 VAC. Power either with 5V or 12V and have an easily way to control brightness… The first two […]
0 comments A couple of years ago I did an ESP-32 based controller for our landscape lights and fountain. It has a nice web-based interface, if you like the way interfaces looked when HTML was young… In addition to this web page, you can hit http endpoints directly, so you can control things with either a browser […]