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Light pods, sensor puks... who knows! It's been alot of 'pukking' fun though!
Rear Pod - Lights and sensor with a kill switch in the corner. Saftey first!
These 'Pods' as I call them are fully modular. I have two, front and rear. This is the rear as I dont want to be blinded by three puk lights!! The internals comprise of a ESP8266 running WLED to control the brightness, colour and craziness of the LEDs and the central puk is a sensor - more specifically an air quality sensor with temperature and humidity (ENS160+AHT10) paired with a really small version of a ESP8266 (ESP01M to be specific). The sensor PUK case is 3D designed and printed again as I wanted it to be my own. There's no point being the same as everyone else!
It's powered by 5 volts so thats where the second 12v to 5v buck on the electric panel comes into play. I chose 5 volts because I wanted the individually controllable LEDs (pixels) rather than the banks of 3. They also don't use as much power as you'd think and they look pretty!
Sensor Puk design - both front and rear look the same but a slight difference in the sensor.
The front pod almost looks the same but theres 3 puk lights and it's a little bigger. Again, it runs on 5 volts fed from the buck in the rear. It was done this way as I already had the cable run from when I first built the van. The sensor puk on the front has a different sensor called a BMP280 which is a barometric pressure sensor along with a AHT20 which is a temperature and humidity sensor too.
Front light pod with sensor to the left. Kill switch between the puks on the right side. I went with rainbow effect to show the individually adressable pixels.
Lots of colourful LEDs and a dimmable shower light.
ESP8266 controller with TIP120 transistor for dimming.
There's alot going on in here.
I went a bit crazy on the design side and put LEDs everywhere. Literally! The faces on the front of the unit were the best ones though. Again, all this is controlled through one ESP8266 running WLED. This one also controls the shower light too, dimmable!
In total theres four sets off this one controller - Fan surround, unit faces, above the tv (see images page) and the shower light. These are powered from the 12v to 5v buck in the 'Tech Cupboard' which can push 20 amps so plenty of power there too.
ALL the LEDs in the van have a kill switch, even when you turn them off in the app they still draw power waiting for a command to turn back on so completely killing the power stops them being a parasitic draw.
Brightness, colour and effect controls
The next light is one above the sink, this one is handy as it isn't so 'in your face' as your above the light. Good position for using the sink and hob. Again this is controlled by another ESP8266 running WLED (they're cheap so why not). The final light is at the footend of the bed - I had spare LEDs and a controller left over so I thought why not!
Full brightness ALL these LEDs pull around 100w! It's wayyy too bright so they never get there and lower brightness prolongs use as theyre not getting hot!
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