u/ApolloAutomation

You can display practical information from Home Assistant on LED matrix panels like this...

https://preview.redd.it/e1iqei2ciekh1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=625b326df32754829dc7e94da3d5e71db895d9cd

OR draw on it and add gifs of your dog! Haha! WLED was updated to version 16 recently, and the Pixel Forge tools are fun and easy to use even on four 64x64 HUB75 panels in a 2x2 (128x128) orientation!

https://reddit.com/link/1vt00xs/video/g43l686eiekh1/player

Also, big shout-out to u/Frenck for creating and maintaining python-wled and the WLED Home Assistant integration. Since switching from WLED-MM to WLED, we're now able to get WLED updates directly through Home Assistant, which is awesome.

We wanted to take a moment to give a huge shout-out to the WLED team and everyone who has put so much work into making WLED what it is. In particular, thank you to AirCoookie, Netmindz, Softhack007, DedeHai, willmmiles, evanc, benjamw, and the many other contributors who continue to make the project better.

The updated Pixel Forge tools on WLED 16 are so fun and easy to use even on four 64x64 HUB75 panels in a 2x2 (128x128) orientation! Big thanks to the community member, Adamaze, who made the 3D printed stand/mount below.

https://preview.redd.it/ir7w0w2t3ekh1.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a041c25faa9aceabec6c5e1e49b8954e0fd4e1e1

https://reddit.com/link/1vsy4yr/video/8r3geaxd4ekh1/player

https://reddit.com/link/1vsy4yr/video/ear07pnf4ekh1/player

Wanted to share a project we got to be a small part of. Zachary Graham, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, built a capstone called "You. Here. Now." that measures a building's environment in real time and turns it into living art.

The setup:

• 20 ESPHome air quality sensors (Apollo AIR-1s), five per floor across a four-story building, plus a rooftop weather station built from another AIR-1 with a light sensor and a custom ESP32 anemometer. 21 devices total.
• He started with Home Assistant, but the campus network blocked static IPs and DHCP discovery, so he gave every sensor a unique MQTT topic through an MQTT broker to keep location-tagged data intact. InfluxDB for storage, Grafana for a public dashboard.
• The data showed the building was badly overcooled: almost no space met ASHRAE-55 comfort, and there was an 11.6°F average temp difference between upper and lower floors.
• 20 motorized paper lanterns that raise and lower with temperature and shift hue with CO2 and humidity. One even pulsed its brightness in sync with a viewer's breathing via mmWave radar.

Our favorite part of the whole thing was that the dashboard was available the whole time, but the lanterns were what made people stop, look up, and start asking real questions about the building they walk through every day. People pay a lot more attention to data they can stand underneath than data on a screen!

We donated the sensors because this is exactly the kind of thing we want to exist. We're a commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, and the majority of the profits from our official ESPHome hardware goes back to them, so we care a lot about keeping this stuff open and local. Open hardware means a student with a good idea doesn't have to wait for a vendor's permission. He can just go build it.

And then we drove down to watch him present it (we are all Kentucky grads, so showing up at the University of Tennessee was a whole thing... Haha). Very worth it.

Happy to answer questions about the hardware side!

Brandon AKA u/SmartHomeSellout was able to get Music Assistant and Sendspin album art working on our Apollo M-1 LED Matrix. He also made some cool wiki articles to show you how to do it! Also, huge shout out to Pavlov for making the ESPHome hub75-studio!

Music Assistant: https://www.music-assistant.io/

Sendspin: https://www.music-assistant.io/player-support/sendspin/

How to install ESPHome firmware Wiki: https://wiki.apolloautomation.com/products/m1/setup/getting-started-m1-esphome/

How to use Sendspin Wiki: https://wiki.apolloautomation.com/products/m1/examples/sendspin/

Pavlov's HUB75 Studio: https://github.com/pavlov-net/hub75-studio

For testing and feedback, be sure to join the Music Assistant Discord: https://discord.gg/PGhhAywcVr