Gesture-controlled IoT nightlight with ESP8266 WiFi module

Hardware

• NodeMcu V3 Wifi module (ESP8266)
• VL53L0X Time-of-Flight (ToF) Laser Ranging Sensor
• WS2812B LED strip

Features

• LED color and light intensity can be set on the web interface
• Light intensity can be also controlled by holding your hand above the distance sensor. Increasing/decreasing the distance increases/decreases the brightness. Removing your hand fixes the brightness.

Comments

Source files are in the form of a PlatformIO project. See https://platformio.org/.

The LED color is saved to EEPROM on each color update. Therefore, changing the color on the interface in a quickly swept fashion is not recommended. Right now the color wheel interface uses the onClick event, and does not support swiping or mouse dragging, so this is not a problem.

Using a HC-SR04 ultrasound distance sensor module has proven to be problematic, especially in confined environments, where multiple reflections can occur. The VL53L0X laser sensor has shown a much better performance.

References

Color wheel, basic web server code (extended with intensity control):

https://github.com/jmbussat/WS2812_ESP8266

Useful code to find I2C devices empirically (with pin definitions):

https://github.com/jainrk/i2c_port_address_scanner

Libraries used

• FastLED
• Pololulu VL53L0X