LEDs Strips for Stairs

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
1

Has anyone configured Vera with scenes for a staircase?

I have a couple of requirements:

  1. Each step/tread needs to illuminate independently (ex. walking up/down stairs each tread lights up individually)
  2. Ability to control all step/treads together (all at once)
  3. Ability to control with Vera (not Arduino, Raspberry pi or individual controller(T1000s))

The only way that I can see this working with Vera is to have multiple controllers (1 per step). I am going to be testing out the multiple controller theory, idea taken from
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,36923.msg302926.html#msg302926

Using this:

Forget the LED strip and Power supply for now.

I do have a fibaro RGBW controller but couldn’t figure out how to configure for 11 steps and didn’t want to spend that much on multiple Fibaro controllers.

Thanks,

2

11 independently controlled strips would require 11 Z-Wave controllers.

It sounds like your ambition is to have the lights travel with a person walking on the stairs. This will be near impossible to do reliably with Vera, or any Z-Wave controller.

3

You are correct on all aspects (an ambition and light travel)…

After I found the cheaper controllers, the idea was now a possibility. I am looking for a better way than the 11 controller method but, will do that if there isn’t another way with Vera.

I was looking at creating a scene in Vera that would use luup code to tell each controller to turn on it’s LED and off.

My goal is to have a few different scenes that do different things.

  1. Motion sensor at top and bottom of steps that turn LEDs on one at a time in the direction of travel.
  2. When front door is open, turn LEDs on one at a time (I have a split level house).
  3. When alarm is tripped, flash LEDs on and off, red.
  4. Multiple scenes for holidays.
  5. Anything else the community can think of…

Wishful thinking that Vera could control addressable LEDs.

Thanks,

4

LED’s following person on stairs = pressure switches on each step. To try to do this via Z-Wave is insane. It will never be reliable and the cost is prohibitive…

5

Have you considered addressable LED tape. You could at least create a running up/ running down effect, like runway lighting, triggered by Vera. It would only need two channels, one to trigger running up and the other to trigger running down. Not quite what you we after but cheaper than 11 controllers.

6

Your goal sounds interesting.

A thought on my experience with stair tread lights. I installed them some time ago on our main stairway. I set the illumination fairly low, they can barely be seen during the day but are perfect at night. I leave them on all the time (no control, not even an of/off switch). We’ve found the ability to see the stairs at night to be a huge advantage for my wife who is a night person. You might consider installing your motion sensors well before the 1st step(s) if you goal is night safety.

7

JohnRob, you bring up an interesting point about moving the motion sensor to allow the lights to come on in time. With the multiple controller idea, I can leave one on and still have the lighting effect that I want. For some reason I am fixated on the steps lighting up one at a time.

Does anyone know of a timing circuit that I could use? Ex. Using one Fibaro RGBW controller and power supply and having all 11 steps in parallel, essentially allowing each step LED to turn on with a delay.

8

Just to add another level of complexity, what’s the use of having each step light up as you step on it? If your foot is on it, you know where it is. The trick would be to light up the next step, depending on if you’re going up or down. Ah, more options! :wink:

9

Sorry, the idea wasn’t to have each step light up as you step on it. But to illuminate in an upward/downward configuration one at a time.

Similar to this Stair light controller - Reactive Lighting - Stair Lighting System - Automatic LED Stair Lighting - YouTube

Ultimately I would have a single controller that would control at least 12 zones and be z-wave/zigbee compatible.

10

Achievable with addressable LED’s. You just program blocks of LED’s rather than single LED’s

11

Here’s a thought, what about lighting them in a 3 step group? A motion sensor at the top (or bottom) could start the process by lighting the top (or bottom) step. A pressure sensor on that step could then light the next one in the sequence. Going to be an expensive and hardware heavy project no matter how you look at it…

12

If you use an Fibaro RGBW you could independently adress four different led strips.

13

If you have individual controllers for each step’s LEDs, adding a delayed action for each step would seem like the easiest way to accomplish this. You’d have two scenes, one for going down and one for going up.

14

@XA44Owq26HxCq88;
That’s what I was thinking. I found this code for blinking the lights.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,5127.msg272368.html#msg272368

This takes care of turning on and off. I’m waiting on the rest of my controllers to arrive to setup and test this.

Also, I haven’t added motion sensor or a new twist. I have a bi-level house so I have 5 steps up and 6 steps down. With this I want to turn all steps on in a up/down pattern when the door opens and when someone comes up or goes down the steps will illuminate one step at a time.

Two maybe three scenes all using similar code as below.

	WITHOUT ORIGINAL STATUS

–Enter the device ID’s here in the array with your device id’s
– 133 - Stair lights 1
– 134 - Stair lights 2

local array_lights = {133,134}
local original_status={}
– loopspeed is the timeout between sending commands
local loopspeedms = 1000

– counter is the number of times to blink
local counter = 1

– delay is the number of seconds to wait between switching off-> on, and on->off
local delay = 8

– sleep() takes milliseconds not seconds - so we do the math here
local delayms = delay * 1000

function set_switch(device,value)

luup.call_action("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:Dimming1","SetLoadLevelTarget",{ newLoadlevelTarget = 50 },device)
luup.call_action("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:SwitchPower1","SetTarget",{ newTargetValue=value },device)

end

– Turn all the switches in the array ON
function switch_on()
for i, device in ipairs(array_lights) do
set_switch(device,“1”)
luup.sleep(loopspeedms)
end
– Run a delay and then call switch_Off which turns them all back off.
– luup.call_delay( ‘switch_off’, delay )
end

– Turn off all the switches in the array
– This is only a stub - does not call switch_on
function switch_off()
for i, device in ipairs(array_lights) do
set_switch(device,“0”)
luup.sleep(loopspeedms)
end

end

– Main program
– Loop over the array “counter” times, with “delay” between loops.
function switch_run()

while counter > 0 do
	counter = counter-1
	switch_on()
	luup.sleep(delayms)
	switch_off()
	luup.sleep(delayms)
end

end

switch_run()

15

Forum member @aivaredze just posted a nice Arduino project that does exactly what you’re asking for here.

Automated led stairs lighting plus Vera Edge