Lightwaverf + google calendar powered christmas lights

Blog ≫ 2014 ≫ Lightwaverf + google calendar powered christmas lights

Tue Dec 16

It's the time of year again! Got my christmas lights on timers, so they come on when it's dark enough and when someone might be looking, but they go off again permanently in the new year. You will need:

lightwaverf wifi link ¹ and a remote socket ².
raspberry pi, mac, linux pc, or other 'nix based computer
some christmas lights

Lightwaverf sockets are useful all the year round of course, they're not just for christmas, but christmas lights tend do be something you want going on and off at preset intervals.

Here's how!

Christmas tree, outside lights, and strange lighting twig thing all plugged into lightwaverf sockets ²
Raspberry pi has the lightwaverf gem ³ installed. gem install lightwaverf or see the instructions on the repo
Tell it about your lightwaverf setup, either lightwaverf update email@email.com 1234 with your email and pin, or again other instructions on the repo
Pop some events in your google calendar with content like "lounge tree 5pm - 10pm every day"
Put the private xml address of your google calendar in your lightwaverf config with lightwaverf configure and follow the prompts
Set up crontab to check the google calendar for updates, instructions on the repo
Sit back and enjoy your festive lights!

Don't want your lights to be quite so regimented? You can change the calendar event description to be like "lounge tree (randomise 10)" and the lights will come on and go off within 10 minutes of the time of the calendar event.

Want to see how this is affecting your electricity bill? If you get the energy monitor ⁴ then the code you just installed will also log your energy usage and will plot it on a graph for you ⁵...

Did it work for you? Any feedback appreciated, either here or to @pauly... seasons greetings!

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](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yKkAcEriotnsaakQV8pPU9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite)

From [November 2014](https://picasaweb.google.com/112554041628292689150/November2014?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite)

Removed old amzn.to/V7yPPK link here.
Removed old amzn.to/RkukDo link here.
Removed old rubygems.org/gems/lightwaverf link here.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Removed old pauly.github.io/lightwaverf/ link here.

raspberry pi: Credit card sized super cheap computer, awesome.

⬅️ Working from home this afternoon :: Playing a DVD in the browser ➡️