These controllers can be bought for about ~$10 from Aliexpress which makes it possible to light an entire room with LEDs for about ~$20 if you wish. Controlling them is pretty easy too, besides the available Android application, the protocol is actually fairly simple.
The controller: RGBWW LED Strip Light WiFi Controller Dimmer ESP8266 (Android WLAN Control) 1 Port Control 200 Lights Output 5 Routes PWM Data
Here’s a simple python script to generate a rainbow:
import time import socket import colorsys # Only change the 192.168.0 part, the 255 is the broadcast address which is # what we want IP = '192.168.0.255' PORT = 30977 # Light IDs (hint, the last few characters of the wifi name: HCX_<id>). Don't # forget to add the 0x before IDS = 0x235817, # Wait for 10ms between setting colours DELAY = 10 # Rainbow steps N = 0xAFF def set_color(r=0, g=0, b=0, w0=0, w1=0): message = [0xFB, 0xEB, r, g, b, w0, w1] for id_ in IDS: # The mac is in reverse order message.append(id_ >> 0) message.append(id_ >> 8) message.append(id_ >> 16) message.append(0x00) sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_BROADCAST, 1) # Convert to characters and cut the numbers to 0xFF sock.sendto(''.join(chr(c & 0xFF) for c in message), (IP, PORT)) time.sleep(DELAY / 1000.) r = g = b = 0 # I like rainbows for i in range(N): # Generate HSV colours h, s, v = i * 1. / N, 1., 1. # Convert HSV to RGB integers r, g, b = [int(0xFF * c) for c in colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(h, s, v)] # Set the colour set_color(r, g, b) # Turn the lights off again set_color()