Easy No-Soldering Bluetooth Controlled Room Lights

Install a strip of NeoPixel lights in your bedroom or living space. Hook them up to a Circuit Playground Bluefruit and control the lights with your phone or tablet. You can add as many different animation modes as you like - it's really easy to do with Adafruit's CircuitPython LED Animations Library.

Choose from millions of colors with our graphical color picker. And the library includes around a dozen pre-written animations that you can customize to your heart's content including Rainbow, Pulse, Sparkle Pulse, Color Chase, Comet, and more. Within each animation you can set custom colors, speeds, directions and brightness. You can even layer the animations over one another to create your own custom animated lighting scenes.

Cycle through modes and fine-tune your brightness levels using Adafruit's free BlueFruit app, which works seamlessly with our CircuitPython sample code. 

Difficulty Level

Assembly:

This is a beginner level project! There's no soldering required - the whole project can be assembled with a screwdriver and a pair of wire strippers!

Code:

For setup, you'll need to download and drag the latest version of the free firmware to your Circuit Playground Bluefruit, then copy and paste a couple of library files from our downloadable bundle. 

You can then copy and paste our code directly onto the board, or install the free Mu code editor if you want to customize your animations. The code for this project is fairly simple and easy to understand and experiment with. This is a great place to start if you're new to CircuitPython.

Cost:

The cost will depend on how many lights you want to install. For my room, a 4 meter strip of 60/m lights is enough to light two rooms when placed near the ceiling along the room divider. The total cost for my project came in at around $150.

Comparatively, the Philips Hue line charges $239 for a light strip that's about half as long, and that doesn't include the control system -- and it's not customizable.

With our solution you'll get to dig into the nuts and bolts a bit, and you'll end up with a one of a kind Home Automation lighting system you can be proud of.