henyjohn / evlamp

FireLamp in pure C with ESP-IDF and ESP32

EvLamp

Clean implementation of Alex Guyver's FireLamp analogue in pure C for ESP32.

What it does

Display beautiful effects on a multiple matrices of NxN WS2812B/SK6812/APA106/SM16703 LEDs.

Features

• ~30 very beautiful effects from different authors, each with set of parameters
• WiFi connectivity in station or access point modes (support for DHCP/static IP addressing)
• JSON HTTP API for remote controlling
• Embedded webserver for remote controlling from browser
• TODO: OTA

Hardware

You will need:

• ESP32 (ESP32 only! ESP32-S2/ESP32-C3/ESP32-C4 and others are not yet supported)
• One or more WS2812B/SK6812/APA106/SM16703 LED matrices
• 4 buttons:
  • Main: long press - On/Off, click - next effect
  • Up/Down: brightness up/down
  • Reset: long press - Reset settings to defaults

You can use the KiCad 6 project located in the hardware directory and containing an example implementation: a schematic, a simple board and ready-made Gerber files for production (compatible with JLCPCB requirements).

LED matrix

The LEDs in the matrix are connected in series like a snake, starting from the bottom row:

The sizes of the most common matrices:

• 8x8
• 32x8
• 16x16

You can build your own matrix with widely available WS2812B/SK6812/APA106 LED strips.

The dimensions of the matrix side are limited to the range 8..128 and number of pixels in matrix cannot be more than 1024.

I do not recommend using matrices with a large number of LEDs due to the maximum frame rate limitations: for a matrix containing 512 LEDs, this limit is 60 fps, and for a matrix of 1024 LEDs maximal fps is 30. It is better to use multiple small matrices.

Single matrix configuration

To control one matrix, only one GPIO pin of the microcontroller is needed:

This configuration is the simplest supported.

Multiple LED matrices (blocks) configuration

You can connect up to 8 LED matrices of the same size to different GPIO pins and achieve high resolution rendering of the effect. For example:

Maximal recommended configuration

2x4 blocks, each 32x16 LEDs. Total screen dimensions: 64x64, 4096 LEDs, 60 fps max.

Changing LED layout

Configure your LED layout at runtime by API or in browser ("Menu -> LEDs Settings"):

Changing default settings

You can select GPIOs, set default WiFi config, LED layout and more in idf.py menuconfig (*** EvLamp configuration ***).

How to build firmware

• Setup latest ESP-IDF master
• git clone https://github.com/UncleRus/EvLamp.git
• git submodule init --recursive --remote
• idf.py menuconfig
• idf.py build
• idf.py flash to upload firmware to ESP