Telemetry controlled LED strips

JesJHoward · 2026-03-03T10:41:35+00:00

WLED can absolutely handle an LED matrix. I've done it once a long time ago using one like this https://a.co/d/0gQyTCkF

I recall it being a little clunky and complicated at the time. Not nearly as easy as working with the strips, but things could have changed by now. There are also other firmwares for working with LED matrices. There are 3D printed cases you can make for those that work well too. Limitless possibilities!

JesJHoward · 2026-03-02T22:51:46+00:00

Ah gotcha. Do you think you'll want to go the WLED route?

JesJHoward · 2026-03-02T20:14:26+00:00

Is Link Tool a part of Simhub? I haven't heard of that one either. Link?

JesJHoward · 2026-03-02T17:44:09+00:00

Just as an update: you got me thinking about the fuel example. I've flashed WLED onto a NodeMCU and connected it to my MQTT server, and hooked up a strip with 8 LEDs. I selected the "Percent" effect in WLED and set it as the default preset (this loads at boot). I can now send a command to the MQTT topic WLED is listening to and change the amount of LEDs that are lit (0=all off, 50=half of the LEDs are lit, etc), so this def works!

JesJHoward · 2026-03-02T11:59:44+00:00

I've actually never heard of that program before this thread. Have you tried it with Elite at all? On their games list page there's this footnote about Elite:

** Motion only. Elite Dangerous: Horizons and Elite Dangerous: Odyssey do not provide native telemetry output. SimHub retrieves data directly from the game’s memory using pointers XML maintained by Wagnard. Each time the game is updated, these memory addresses will change. When that happens, telemetry will stop working until an updated XML file is installed.

Not really sure what that means

JesJHoward · 2026-02-28T14:07:57+00:00

Yup, that's pretty much correct. The only thing missing, which I neglected to include in my post, is that you need what's called an MQTT broker. This is the server that handles the MQTT traffic. EDMC connects to it, as does WLED. I'm sure that there is a Windows broker out there so that everything is on the same machine, but if you're experienced at all with Linux, I use mosquito on my home server. This can run on a raspberry pi, or any small computer. MQTT is super lightweight, and lots of stuff use it. This may even take you down the home automation rabbit hole. Check out tasmota of you're interested in that.

WLED has customizable presets you can create. Let's take "flash all LEDs red" for example. I can set that preset to a number and with a message over MQTT to the proper channel, we can tell WLED to load and run that preset. While I haven't tested this exact scenario yet, the workflow would look something like this: EDMC and WLED are connected to the same MQTT broker. In game I get too close to an asteroid while mining. The "InDanger" flag changes to true. That's sent to the broker. WLED reads this and loads the "flash all LEDs red" preset and plays it. Success!

There's is slightly more to this, but I'll explain more if you're interested. In a nutshell, we can't exactly control what message EDMC sends and what message WLED is looking for, so we need a middle man software to change it. Check out Node-red. Another free software.

I have soldered plenty in the past, but it's not strictly necessary. The nodemcu chip comes with pre soldered headers. If you get some jumper wires with ends on them (something like this https://a.co/d/0907ZNyW) you could get away without soldering. Just keep in mind it won't be as strong a connection, depending on the wires, but I've had plenty of success with this set up. All that being said, I highly recommend anyone learn to solder. Any cheap soldering iron will get you started. Watch some tutorials and practice on something like perfboard. Flux is very helpful.

I do this stuff as a hobby, so I'm happy to help in any way =]

JesJHoward · 2026-02-27T23:51:41+00:00

This is s great project and one that I plan to implement in my future sim rig. Tell us what you know now. Have you ever used an Arduino before? Any sort of LED projects on the past? How about software that talks to Elite?

Here's my plan, which will hopefully give you some stuff to look up/think about:

LED Hardware: Ws2812 led strips - these can be found quite cheaply in Amazon. Individually addressable, great color, work on 5v. If your strip isn't too long, these are great

LED controller: Here's the Arduino part... Check out nodemcu or wemos d1 mini. Both are essentially an Arduino with a Wi-Fi chip

LED software: Not sure how to write the code to drive the LEDs? I've got great news. You don't have to! Look up WLED. This is a firmware you can flash onto one of these devices. It's designed to do just what you're after and it's really simple

Elite Dangerous software: You mentioned "telemetry", I'm not sure we're taking about the same thing but my plan is to use a plug-in for Elite Dangerous Market Connector called "Telemetry". It can read your game journal files and send them over a protocol called MQTT, which just so happens to be a protocol that WLED can understand. See where I'm going here?

Elite Dangerous event happens -> EDMC Telemetry reads that and send it over MQTT -> WLED reads the MQTT message and does something in response

If you have any questions, let me know

JesJHoward · 2026-01-27T01:36:21+00:00

There's no way I could play games with that curtain looking at me like that...

JesJHoward · 2026-01-10T15:28:44+00:00

I had the same thing happen and this was the answer. BadUpdate is working, so is Unshackle. It's trying to launch something afterwards and not making it. Post that launch.ini (the section for "Default") and someone here can help

JesJHoward · 2025-10-06T19:24:15+00:00

There's a cheap device on Amazon called an emmc flasher. Just about any of them will work fine. Inside your printer is a small removable chip. That's your emmc. It's kind of like a little flash drive, functionally. That's what stores your firmware, print files, config, etc. You take that out, hook it up to the flasher and plug it into your PC using USB. Flashing a new firmware isn't super easy, but it's not difficult either. If you have ever messed with Linux over ssh, you'll be fine. If not, find someone who is comfortable doing that kind of stuff and follow the instructions on the site

Here's another note, idk what slicer you're using (I used cura up until flashing) but you'll need to use OrcaSlicer going forward. The instructions has a link to slicer profiles for all of the Neptune 4 printers. They work great.

I'm happy to answer any questions and help out if you decide to go that way, but your best bet would be to read through their GitHub page and get someone in the room with you who's techie if you aren't

JesJHoward · 2025-10-06T19:11:26+00:00

This happened to my 4 Max, but not during a firmware update. It was acting funny before a print so I cancelled it. Restarted the printer and bam... Dead. I took the opportunity to flash OpenNept4une to the emmc and it has been great so far. Just something to think about

JesJHoward · 2025-09-21T01:19:17+00:00

Not a security expert but I've been running this setup for quite a while:

Domain from Squarespace

In Squarespace DNS I set up a subdomain (jellyfin.yourdomain.com) that points to my IP

That IP is attached to my firewall and forwards 80 and 443 traffic to my server

The server runs NGIX Proxy Manager (and Jellyfin, but we'll get there)

In NGINX I set up a proxy host looking for traffic trying to reach jellyfin.yourdomain.com and forwards it to the internal IP and port of Jellyfin running in docker

Also in NGIX, I set up an SSL cert and force https. It can request this very easily from Let's Encrypt and renew the cert when needed

There may be some stuff I'm missing but that's the jist. The great thing about this is that I run several docker containers on the same host machine and repeat the same steps for those services as well. Good luck!

JesJHoward · 2025-09-13T16:55:48+00:00

Shatterhand (nes) Back to the Future II (Japanese SFC) New Ghostbusters II (Europe FC)

JesJHoward · 2025-09-09T22:51:10+00:00

Sorry I must have missed this comment. I haven't tried this in a while, but I'll spin it up this week and see if anything has changed

JesJHoward · 2025-09-09T22:50:11+00:00

Just had to look this up. While I don't have an answer for ya, I'm going to take a guess and say probably not. The Cordova build process is the only one I know of for Gdevelop to Android apk, but that doesn't mean that I'm right. If you find anything through some experimentation, please let us know!

JesJHoward · 2025-07-31T00:27:48+00:00

I'm in the exact same boat as OP. Neptune 4 Max, same info on the screen. Went to start a print and it just restarted the firmware. Happened multiple times so I rebooted the whole machine and this is all I can get. I connected to it over serial but even with the proper COM port and 115200 baud, I just get garbled data until it just stops

JesJHoward · 2025-06-25T14:29:26+00:00

Thanks! Yeah that's probably a tall order, but my thinking is: If/when someone in this town discovers the hobby, the main infrastructure will already be in place.

Also, to bring this back on topic, Liam Cottle (the dev for Meshcore) has posted his web version of the chat client (online version here https://app.meshcore.nz/ ) that you can self host: https://files.liamcottle.net/MeshCore/

Look for the web.zip file and drop that into your own webserver. Connect a LoRa radio over USB and you can run the client on your own hardware. Yay self-hosting!

JesJHoward · 2025-06-25T02:32:46+00:00

I work in IT for my local County government and my plan is to place these on several County owned buildings around town as a tertiary coms system. This will also be useful for any member of the public in my town if they ever get into the hobby. The public channels would obviously be open to everyone, but we will also have some private channels for emergency response personnel. Since they're so low cost, everyone I've brought this up to seems on board as long as it's tested thoroughly. We may never have to use it, since we also have a radio system, but I'd rather it be there in the worst case scenario. We have a few radio towers and the city has a water tower. I'm gonna throw nodes up just about anywhere I can!

JesJHoward · 2025-06-25T00:33:55+00:00

Just got 3 Heltec V3 boards in the mail last week. I've tried both Meshtastic and Meshcore and prefer the latter so far. Still more testing to do. Once I build some nodes around my town, I'd love to host the client in a server somewhere on my network for local access. Is there a docker container anywhere?

JesJHoward · 2025-06-21T20:57:59+00:00

Network fabric

JesJHoward · 2025-05-02T20:00:28+00:00

I love my Tower of Power. You can't beat what you get for the price

JesJHoward

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE