Notice

You are currently browsing the website for customers from Switzerland. We recommend switching to the United States version of the site, optimized for your region.
Switzerland
€ EUR
Prices without VAT

Technical background of IoT tree (+ competition)

Same like every year, we have prepared something special for you for Christmas. It was an interactive Christmas tree. How was this idea created? Read it directly from its author.
This is an archive article published 02/15/2018. Some information may no longer be up to date and in line with the current state. Please contact us in case of interest.

Who’s coming? Santa or St Nicholas? And how does he get to us?

During the brainstorming with my colleagues I realized that the SOS electronic building in Košice has no chimneys (brainstorming is a very useful thing!). It is a real bummer because Santa cannot get into the building on Christmas and thus won’t bring us any presents, nor light up the Christmas tree. What about that? So, I thought that I'll save the tree at least. I'll connect it to the Internet so our customers can light up the tree through the web instead of Santa. The gifts were saved by the boss on the paychecks.


What did I use for it?
- ESP8266 WiFi module
- Special Christmas LED lighting with WS2811 drivers
 - Raspberry B v3
 - Raspberry camera (for everyone to see that the tree is really lighting up)
 - Artificial Christmas tree - Box of Christmas decorations

In the first phase of the project, I tested what the ESP8266 WiFi module together with the WS2811 LED drivers can do. But especially what can I do? I made the LEDs flash, light, but as usual, only at home on the table. The SOS electronic WiFi network did not work that way. The ESP8266 was getting frozen, it wasn’t responding. It had to be restarted. Where is the problem? What now? Arduino libraries?

After hours of experimenting and debugging the code, the bulb lit up. No, not yet on a tree! In the SOS, hundreds of devices are connected to the PC network; it’s really busy data traffic. That's why I tried to connect the WiFi module to a separate WiFi network. The IT administrator has set up my WiFi router, but it didn’t help either.

Later I came to see that the above-mentioned "WiFi router" is just an ordinary AP in bridge mode (I say hello to a colleague :). So the whole data traffic in the network was also on the WiFi module, which sometimes wasn’t able to keep up with the 80Mhz processor tact. One option was to drop ESP8266 into a trash (I was pretty close to it) and experiment with another HW. For example, ESP32. It has 2 CPUs with 260MHz tact, or use Lantronix, AAEON professional solutions. Well, "cannon on sparrow"? Finally, I've solved it all with a real WiFi router with NAT.


What about Live Video?

Raspberry Pi with a Raspberry camera was an unambiguous winner. Stream live video from SOS electronic directly to the Internet via an open port, or experiment with a proxy somewhere in the data centre, solve HTML / JS video player in web browsers? After a while of "googling", I discovered YouTube Live. Setting it up was very easy. The image super in full HD, a relatively small data flow but live was not really live. Video delay of 10 seconds or more was really big for this purpose.

After reading “half the Internet”, I discovered the Czech streaming service AngelCam. The image-to-data ratio was worse but still acceptable (MJPG compression), 1-2 seconds delay. So the "live video" of the tree from SOS was streamed from AngelCam. 

What to add at the end? It looks so easy and yet I still learned so much during its creation.

Greetings from Matúš Čopík, author

PS: Get ready for next SOS electronic Christmas! 

Videos

It looks so easy and yet I still learned so much during its creation. What did I use for it? - ESP8266 WiFi module - Special Christmas LED lighting with WS2811 drivers - Raspberry B v3 - Raspberry camera (for everyone to see that the tree is really lighting up) Greetings from Matúš Čopík, author https://www.soselectronic.com/articles/no-name/technical-background-of-iot-tree-competition-2119


Competition:

We enjoyed the Christmas tree during the Christmas, so now we can make you happy too.
How many LED bulbs were on our tree? We will draw two winners of Esp32-DevKitC


Thank you for your efforts and all your responses.
We received exactly 45 answers.  The correct response is 50 LED bulbs. 
We have drawn the winners: Mr. L. Tamás from Hungary and Mr. J. Michal from Slovakia.

Congratulations!!

Do not miss these articles

Do you like our articles? Do not miss any of them! You do not have to worry about anything, we will arrange delivery to you.

Additional products


RPI CAMERA BOARD 1.3 5MP RASPBERRY PI  
RPI CAMERA BOARD 1.3 5MP

Raspberry Pi Camera Board 1.3 5MPixel

Accessories for Embedded Systems

Ord. No.: 153872
Manufacturer: RASPBERRY PI
No longer available

1593HAMPI3CLR HAMMOND  
1593HAMPI3CLR

Enclosure ABS 98,5x69,5x29,6mm Clear Raspberry Pi 3-B

Standard Plastic Enclosures

Ord. No.: 217354
Manufacturer: HAMMOND
in stock 3 pcs
69 pcs in 5-15 days
1 pcs+
2 pcs+
10 pcs+
50 pcs+
7,50 €
6,97 €
6,39 €
5,93 €
  • ADD TO CART
  • Get Quote
  • Add to favorites
  • Add to watchdog
  • Add item to compare

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B RASPBERRY PI  
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

RPI-B BCM2837 64bit mode, BCM43438, 1GB RAM

Maker Boards for Development, Testing or Learning

Ord. No.: 212584
Manufacturer: RASPBERRY PI
No longer available

ESP32-DevKitC ESPRESSIF  
ESP32-DevKitC

Development Board Wi-Fi, BT 4.2 Female header

WiFi modules

Ord. No.: 236729
Manufacturer: ESPRESSIF
No longer available

ESP-WROOM-02 ESPRESSIF  
ESP-WROOM-02

Wi-Fi Module w/ESP8266 802.11b/g/n 20dBm 20x18x3mm

WiFi modules

Ord. No.: 231276
Manufacturer: ESPRESSIF
No longer available
Do you agree with cookies being stored?
Welcome to the SOS electronic website. Before you enter our online world, we would like to ask you to allow us to store cookies on your browser. Your consent will help us view the site without error, measure its performance, and track additional statistics. Apart from that, we can bring you an offer of our products and services, literally tailor-made. We also provide cookies to third parties. However, you are definitely safe with us.
The proper operation of the website
More stable technical control
Better marketing offer
Necessary Only selected Accept all cookies
Change the settings
Country
Select the country you are located in to receive relevant information and services tailored to your region.
Choose a language
Select your preferred language for displaying website content and communicating with our support.
Currency
Select the currency in which you want to see product prices. This way, we ensure you see current prices tailored to your needs.
Show prices with VAT
Select whether you want to display prices with or without VAT to have a better overview of costs.
Prices without VAT Prices incl. VAT