For not being a streamer its all I get asked from people see the lights in my office so figured I’d write a quick post on them and the wonder that is WLED ๐
Yep even Christmas isn’t safe from some outdoor RGB path lights
Back to the roof lights
The Hardware
For anyone who knows me, Open-source is a must so a huge shout out to the WLED project. With the software decided on, next up was the hardware, looking at the WLED project page for supported hardware we’re looking at ESP8266 or ESP32.
In my case I went for an ESP-01s module as there is a handy carrier board available for connecting to addressable LED’s. These can be found here but with AliExpress being what it is I’ll attach a picture below

With that out of the way its down to the LED strip and power supply, As these where roof lights and I knew I didn’t need warm white I went with some WS2812 strips after consulting the addressable LED guru that is Intermit.Tech.
The exact ones I got where 60 per meter and being WS2812’s they run at 5V avoiding the efficient variant for max brightness, so with this know it was time to get a suitable power supply.
Again to the Intermit.Tech YouTube page where I ended up settling on a Meanwell UHP series 500W unit model UHP-500-5V. It was also suggested to run additional power injection points to the ends to make up for voltage drop.
With the hardware underway I began testing covering materials.
Luckily I got it on the first try as above, this is the same material that can be found in cushions and stuffed teddies, I got mine from Amazon and with that that it was time to get to work.
And of course I had to test as I was going, mainly to give my arms a rest from working above my head.
The Software
As mentioned previously I’ll be running WLED this was mainly down to its open-source nature and my previous experience with it. Some of the useful features that I use are:
- Home Assistant Integration
- Sync
- Not the Sync of Power controls but the ability to add additional WLED controllers via IP address as channels allowing effects to span multiple strips
- E1.31 interface to allow greater control from software like xLights
- Saving of presets
Using WLED i started creating presets based on effects i liked settling on around 6 total for now, these also show up in Home Assistant allowing them to be called dynamically.
An example of an automation I was running day one is using an additional Aqara Zigbee Door/Window sensor and Google Nest Mini to sense when the door was opened to run
- Step 1
- Set the roof lights to a lightning effect
- Play Thunder sounds from the Google Nest
- Step 2
- Announce “Welcome to the office”
- Switch lights to the standard rainbow mode
- Play a radio stream
This was later amended to require the time to be after 4PM and both my Work laptop and Office computer to be off as you can see in the automation screenshot below

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