Watch the video to learn how to make do-it-yourself holiday lights for Christmas and Halloween using ANAVI Miracle Controller, Olimex WS2811 LED ropes and the popular open source home automation platform Home Assistant!

All kits of ANAVI Miracle Controller come with WS2812B LED strip, however the board is also compatible with other addressable LED strips. In a previous update we covered Adafruit NeoPixels and now we are focussed on Olimex WS2811 LED Rope.

Required Hardware

The following hardware was used in the video

• ANAVI Miracle Controller
• 5V power supply
• Two Olimex LED-ROPE-10
• Raspberry Pi (recommended 3 or newer) with Home Assistant

Olimex LED-ROPE-10

Olimex is a well-known company in the maker community. I live in Plovdiv, Bulgaria where ANAVI Miracle Controller is made and I am lucky that Olimex headquarter is also here.

Olimex offers addressable, water proof, sealed with resin RGB WS2811 ropes with various number of LEDs. For this video I used a couple of Olimex LED-ROPE-10. The rope is waterproof so it is suitable for both indoor and outdoor installations. It works with power supply in the range from 3.3V to 5.5V and has a dedicated WS2811 driver for each LED.

The typical color code for Olimex LED-ROPE-10:

• Olimex rope RED wire - VCC (3.3V-5.5V)
• Olimex rope GREEN/BLUE (varies) wire - GND
• Olimex rope WHITE wire - DATA

Each RGB LED in Olimex rope draws approximately 50mA at 5V with red, green, and blue at full brightness. Olimex LED-ROPE-10 has only 10 RGB LEDs with makes approximately 500mA and it is OK to power it through ANAVI Miracle Controller. For installation will longer ropes with bigger consumption wire the VCC and GND lines directly to the power supply.

Set ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V input and use an appropriate 5V center positive power supply.

Below is the wiring of a couple of Olimex LED-ROPE-10 to ANAVI Miracle Controller:

NOTE: The color codes of other addressable LED strips, including WS2812B LED strip from all kits, are different!

Due to differences in color codes this wiring is valid only for Olimex LED ropes. Be careful and check the proper wiring if you are using a different type of addressable LED strip or rope.

Software

Home Assistant must installed. If you haven’t installed it already, a single board computer like Raspberry Pi (version 3 or newer) is the perfect fit!

Also MQTT broker is required. You can install Mosquitto from Home Assistant add-on store. Integrate the MQTT broker in Home Assistant and enable discovery. The exact steps have been covered in a previous update when we discussed Adafruit NeoPixels.

Also make sure you are running the latest version of the open source firmware for ANAVI Miracle Controller. It is available at GitHub and here you can find instructions how to flash it on the board.

Once the setup is done with Home Assistant you can easily control the holiday lights from your personal computer, smartphone or tablet. The web interfaces works like a charm on any modern web browser and you can install the official mobile app on your smartphone. Furthermore, with Home Assistant you can create and trigger various automations for the holiday lights.

Have a look at the video in YouTube for demonstrations and more details. Stay tuned for more updates about ANAVI Miracle Controller and exciting new open source hardware gadgets!

Thanks,
Leon