Hackaday Prize Entry: Under Cabinet LED Lighting Controller

[Matt Meerian]’s workbench seems to be in perpetual shadow, so he has become adept at mounting LED strips under all his shelves and cabinets. These solve any problems involving finding things in the gloom, but present a new problem in that he risks a lot of LED strips being left on, and going round turning them all off is tedious.

His solution is to make a wireless controller for all his home LED strips, under the command of a web app from his Android tablet. An ESP8266 and a set of MOSFETs provide the inner workings, and the whole is presented on a very compact and well-designed purple OSH Park PCB reflow soldered on a $20 Wal-Mart hotplate and set in a plastic enclosure. The web interface is still in development, but has a fairly simple CSS front end for the ESP8266 code. All software, the schematic, and BoM can be downloaded from the Hackaday.io page linked above.

This project isn’t going to end world hunger or stop wars, but it’s beautifully done and well documented, and it makes [Matt]’s life a lot easier. And that makes it a good entry for the Hackaday Prize.

12 thoughts on “Hackaday Prize Entry: Under Cabinet LED Lighting Controller

      1. This is a true point. But my enthusiasm to build something decreases significantly when I can get it for half the price ready made. Of course this can mean, that the range of DIY projects decreases.

    1. Project author here… Yes, many electronics on hackaday can be replaced with commercial products. (cell phone app, Raspberry pi, arduino, etc.) My view of things is designing and assembling the hardware is the fun part. There are some differences between the two, but it really doesn’t matter. My goal was to make something that I use on a daily basis. (9 out of 10 of my projects end up in a box, never to see the light of day again)

      1. Not so much a copy and past error as repeating what the designer put in his write-up. We prefer a light touch when it comes to putting words into the mouths of project creators even if it’s obvious to the most casual of readers that there’s a bit more to it.

  1. I control a ~4 meter long strip under my kitchen cabinets using a custom PIR controller, PIR module is an eBay $1.50 module, a custom board made using Fritzing, the board has an ATTiny 85, 5v regulator, diode for reverse polarity and MOSFET to drive the LED strip which is a 12v strip from AliExpress, cost about $9 for 5 meters.

    It’s been running for over 2 years now without fault.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/CdBKt

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