Hello, I am in need of controlling 15 independent battery powered LED lighting strips from a master controller. I have thought thru and tested all elements independently but am stuck on how to send the commands to change scenes to my network.
I believe I should leverage a mesh network and store the lighting chase scenes on each of the 15 nodes. This will one implemented in a high WiFi traffic environment, so my thought was to just transmit the following parameters to trigger lighting scene changes. (Node ID, lighting scene #, brightness, speed). Since these are chase scenes, it would be a lot of data to transmit the chases step by step across the network, so thought it would be more robust to just transmit the signal to change the scene since this would just require successfully transmitting data (Node ID, lighting scene #, brightness, speed) to each of the 15 nodes about 20 times over a 3 minutes period, just need to ensure all nodes receive the signal at the same time so they can change to the new scene and parameters at the same time (or within ~50ms of each other, preferred).
Am I on the right track to send an array into the mesh network and each node can extract the parameters related to it’s node ID? Or should I send the parameters into the network separately, node by node? I thought that would impact my ability to get all nodes to appear to change scenes together.
I have limited knowledge on coding, but have been able to successfully test communication with RF24, RF24 Network, and RF24 Mesh.
This code seemed to get me close.
I just need guidance on how to strategically construct the packet to achieve my goal (send all data across mesh at once, which would be an array of 4 integer parameters across 15 nodes.....or to send this out independently and rely on the mesh network to route each message and ensure it is received)
Also, to help visualize what I am doing, this is a drumline and each drummer has an Arduino node, battery pack, and led strip. The goal is to change the lighting on all drums together, but allow each drum to switch to a special scene (different color, chase pattern) and appear to change in unison. In a busy WiFi environment, so I want to keep transmitting the packet until I am certain it is received. Better to receive a little late than not receive at all :-). I really need to get this network working by Sunday, or each drummer will be pushing a button on each Arduino to change scenes manually so I would appreciate any expert guidance here. Thank you!!!!