English CC captions available

I like Dry Martinis. Maybe due to the cocktail glass design or to the fact that even a drunk bar tender is able to make one. So, here it is my tribute, a wifi operated neon led sign.

Neon really?

Making a real neon sign is of course out of my possibilities but I’m goind to use a continuous led strip with a really good effect.

The main technique to build a neon sign is to cut acrylic sheets but I have decided to use a different approach: making a 3d printed frame-base for the led strip. I have used Fusion 360 and Anet A8 printer. You can just download the gcode and print it anywhere. 

Connections

Place the led strip into the 3d printed base. Then cut along the marked line. There you will find the power connectors. Solder 1 cable for GND and 1 cable for 12V+

Solder 12V+ to DC female connector. Connect GND cable to Relay. Then Relay to GND DC female.

Connect Relay module to Firebeetle> GND to GND, + to VCC and Signal to D3.

3d printed frame

You can use glue over acrylic or just download and print this custom made frame.

Source code

Click to download Arduino .ino source code

Code is easy to understand.

Inside the loop a web page is served with a button. If the button is clicked, the function relayOn or relayOff is called according to relayStatus variable.

Regarding relay control. Sending a LOW signal to the pin where Relay module is connected turns the relay on. Sending a HIGH signal, turns the relay off.

digitalWrite(pinRelay, LOW); 

Regarding the dry martini image, you may wonder where is it hosted. The image was converted to base 64 and encoded in this line:

client.println("<img src='data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4Q20RXhpZg………...'>"); 

Instructions

Before uploading configure your WiFi credentials at

const char* ssid = "SSID";
const char* password = "PASSWORD";

Go to Arduino IDE, Tools, Serial Monitor, 115200 speed. The board will connect to your WiFi router and print obtained IP to the serial monitor. Load a browser and open that IP. You will get the dry martini neon sign control page.

You can also setup router external DNS and turn the sign on and off from the Internet. 

Interested in other projects?

https://www.instagram.com/ronibandini/