Parts

• Wi-Fi LED Strip
• Stream Deck – Any size

Concept

Here’s the idea. We are going to illuminate a box using a Wi-Fi controlled LED Strip. The LED strip that we are selecting uses Wi-Fi to connect to your home router and this allows you to control the LED strip (colors and state) using an IoT home automation site called Tuya Smart Life. In order to control the lights, you can either use your smartphone or buy a Stream Deck. The Stream Deck gives you push-button control of the light. So, when you start up your meeting or online meetings, you just touch a button on the Stream Deck and your live streaming lights turn on, including your new on-air light.

Configure Wi-Fi LED Strip

The first major hurdle is getting your new Wi-Fi LED Strip connected to your Wi-Fi network at your house. You need to know the network name and password. To configure the LED lights, you have to start with the Tuya Smart Life mobile app on your phone. Download the appropriate app for Android or Apple. A side bonus is that the Tuya Smart Life app supports lots of home automation things you might have around the house. When you are searching around Amazon, make sure in the Q&A or the reviews area to see if the product supports Tuya. If so, you can have everything controlled by one app. Sign up for a new account and then add your LED Strip to your account. Give the LED strip an easy-to-remember name. Admittedly, this might now go very smoothly. I have found that I need to try the process a few times to get the app to detect my lights. If you run into any trouble, make sure that your lights are in pairing mode and that your Wi-Fi access point supports 2.4GHz.

Configure IFTTT

Visit IFTTT.com and sign up for a free account. With a free account, you can create three applets. IFTTT allows you to connect things to other things. In our case, we are eventually going to connect a Stream Deck to the LED strip. A Stream Deck doesn’t normally connect to the LED strip, so we are going to use IFTTT to bridge this gap. Create a new Applet. Under This, add a webhook. Under That, connect the Smart Life service. A webhook is a trigger that the Stream Deck will use to cause a command on the Smart Life platform. In our case, we are going to toggle the state of the LED strip (turn it on if it was off or turn it off if it was on). Note the key and name of the webhook when you create it at IFTTT. You will use this info for your Stream Deck.

Configure Stream Deck

The Stream Deck has a bunch of buttons that you can press to automate your live stream studio, control things while you are streaming, or quickly open apps at a touch. I use my Stream Deck to control PowerPoint while I give presentations and webinars.

Within the Stream Deck software, open Store. This will list all of the integrations that are possible. Search for IFTTT. Install the plugin. Drag the custom button to a new button your Stream Deck and configure it with the name of the applet and key from the IFTTT website. I grabbed an image of an On Air light from Google Images and added it as a custom icon.

Experience

I have been using this configuration for about a year and it has worked every time. Right before, I start a live stream event, I tough the Stream Deck and my On Air light comes on a few seconds later. Stream Deck also supports events that cause many things to happen with one button press. You could add this IFTTT event to a list of other events that happen all at once. We didn’t have to code anything to make this LED controller but it is a little complicated to configure. And, every part of the system is not well documented out there. This is truly for the maker, but you can get it going if you persist. Now that you know about this general workflow, you can control anything during your live streams. Maybe, you have a light turn on in the background when you get a new sub. Let me know what you build with this!

Parts

First, you need to go buy a thing on Amazon. I recommend for this project an ESP8266-compatible device like the NodeMCU. Don’t be scared. Add it to your Amazon shopping list or ask Alexa to buy you one. It’s $8.

Other parts that you will need:

• Laptop
• Micro USB cable

ThingSpeak

While you are waiting for your Amazon stuff to arrive, you can learn about ThingSpeak.

ThingSpeak is where we are going to store the data collected by our thing and where we can see the data that we collected. Visit ThingSpeak.com and Sign Up for an account. This will just take a minute, and the user accounts are free. Once you have a user account, you need to create a channel. ThingSpeak channels are where data gets stored. Create a new channel by selecting Channels, My Channels, and then New Channel. Name the channel “ESP8266 Signal Strength” and name Field 1 “RSSI”. Click “Save Channel” at the bottom to finish the process.

Arduino Setup

Once the ESP8266 comes in the mail in a couple of days, you need to gather a few more things to be able to program this thing. You will need a laptop and a micro USB cable (like the one that you charge a phone with). On the laptop, we need to install some software to be able to program the ESP8266. Visit Arduino.cc and install the Arduino IDE.

Once the Arduino IDE is installed, open the program so we can do a couple of setup steps to get it ready to program ESP8266 devices. Under File, Preferences, and Additional Boards Manager URLs, add this link: http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json – this will allow the Arduino IDE to manage ESP8266-compatible boards.

Close and reopen Arduino. Click on Tools, Board, and Boards Manager…. to open the board manager. The Arduino IDE will load the Additional Boards URL that you entered in the preferences.

ThingSpeak Library

Arduino needs to have a library installed in order for your thing to know how to send data to ThingSpeak. In the Arduino IDE, choose Sketch, Include Library, and Manage Libraries. Search for “thingspeak” and click Install.

The thing that you bought from Amazon uses the CP2102 USB driver. You might have to install a USB driver from Silicon Labs for this to work with your computer. Connect the ESP8266 to your laptop with the micro USB cable.

Back on the Arduino IDE, under tools, configure the following settings:

Whew. We got through the setup. Now we can program this device or any ESP8266-compatible device and shouldn’t have to do that again.

Programming

The code that the Arduino IDE uses is called a “sketch” – this is just a short program that the device runs over and over. In our project, we are going to have the code measure the signal strength of the Wi-Fi connection and upload the data to ThingSpeak, wait, and repeat. Over time, we can see the signal strength of our Wi-Fi connection. Copy the example code to your Arduino IDE and change some of the defaults to match your Wi-Fi network and ThingSpeak settings.

Once everything is set, click Sketch and then Upload. This will take the code and program the ESP8266 with it. It takes a minute, so be patient. If anything goes wrong, make sure that you have the right board settings and that your “Port” matches what your laptop thinks the port is.

Back on ThingSpeak, you should see data start to come in. You are looking for the Private View of your channel and a chart that is updating. As new data comes in, the chart shows the latest value. If you carry the ESP8266 around the house, you might notice the signal strength changing.

Next Steps

To take the project further, you can use MATLAB on ThingSpeak to do some data analysis. I will post about IoT data analytics on another day. The ESP8266 source code for sending data to ThingSpeak is available on GitHub.

Welcome to the Internet of Things. Let me know if you try this out, and let me know if you take this project further and build something cool.