The Neopixel Display System is a server device and several clients emerging from the convergence of an experiment to drive a Neopixel Matrix display using an ESP32 processor, and an interest / need to remotely control an external audio ouptut from OBS Studio.
The Neopixel display panel
The Neopixel Server Web Page
The Neopixel Client Application
At this time, the key components of the system are the NeopixelServer, an OBS Studio plugin, and a .NET MAUI Android / WIndows application.
The NeopixelServer is an application running on an ESP32 that operates a Neopixel Matrix display and some physical I/O (mechanical relays and virtual LEDs).
The Neopixel Server is developed using the Arduino for ESP32 development tools
It hosts a WiFi based web server and provides its own web page to control its capabilities. The web server provides its metadata and status data as JSON objects and control is implemented using Http GET requests. WARNIING the ESP32 does not support 5G networks.
It is also a Bluetooth Central Device that uses the same messaging EXCEPT control is implemented using JSON objects rather than a GET construct. The Arduino version of the Neopixel Client utilizes the BLE interface
The features consist primarily of Displaying text in choice of color (or rainbow) with specified alignment (left, center, right, scroll), displaying a selected builtin bitmap image, again with specified alignment, setting one of four virtual LEDs to on, off, or blink, and turning a mechanical relay or analog switch on or off.
Go here for the Neopixel server build quick start
The OBS Studio script is a python script that allows control of any / all of the provided features as a result of activation and / or deactivation of any scene. The user interface also supports enabling / disabling the participation of each OBS Studio scene.
Go here for OBS Studio script details
The Neopixel Client is a .NET MAUI application using a BLE interface on Android and a HTTP interface on Windows (The BLE service used does not support Windows)
Go here for Neopixel Client details
Most of my projects are more about doing something interesting and learning new skills than producing a particular result. I will describe a few of them here offer background on certain implementation decisions.
Design a metadata construct that can provide sufficient information for a client to construct a realistic user interface.
Implement metadata generation in the server applilcation.
Implement dynamic user interface generation in javascript for a web page and in C# for .NET MAUI
Develop an ESP32 application that implements Wifi (with web server and embedded web page) or Bluetooth BLE or both and that is designed to remove either or both if not needed.
Implement a mechanism to launch and test the embedded web page when it is not actually embedded.
Implement javascript version of dynamic user interface generation.
Embed the tested web page into the Neopixel Server.
Learn about the .NET MAUI environment.
Implement pure C# version of dynamic user interface generation.
Develop application versions for both Android and Windows targets, at least one of which is BLE capable.
WARNING Microsoft Visual Studio Preview Version 17 or newer is required for .NET MAUI.
Learn the details of OBS Studio scripting, especially the uesr interface operation.
Develop a script based user interface that offer full accessibility to all of the Neopixel Server features.
Develop the connectivity to control the Neopixel server from the OBS Studio script.