Original article (in German) by Michael Imberg, translated by Aircoookie
Brief explanation of the technology:
What is special about the WLED project?
Normal LED strips are powered up and only light up in one color.
WLED wirelessly transmits data via WiFi.
You need a different kind of LED for that,
one where each individual LED is also equipped with a microprocessor.
Therefore each LED has an individual address and can be controlled separately.
Expressed plainly, Christian Schwinne has reinvented the light switch. But it is a bit more complicated than that: The 22-year old student from Rhynern (note: in Hamm,Germany) is the inventor of the WLED technology and is known to PC gamers and tech enthusiast worldwide under his pseudonym "Aircoookie". This is the case because he openly provides his developed software to everyone. "Open Source" is the term associated with free operating systems like Linux, for example. Christian Schwinne also publishes his coding openly on the Internet and enables others to work with it and converse about it. As with an internet connection, the "W" (in WLED) stands for wireless/WiFi. The fact that LEDs are light sources is well known in the general public. LED is an acronym for light emitting diode. These diodes are especially popular with PC gamers and so-called case modders who want to prettify their machine. For that they like to use LED strips that are controlled by the PC mainboard, for example. Christian Schwinne has now unleashed the LEDs, so they con be controlled directly via WiFi-enabled devices like your phone. For that, he developed an app. In the meantime, there are no longer just PC owners who light their machines this way (you can find countless videos on YouYube) - cars and in one instance even a garage door are illuminated using WLED. "Of course I was known as a nerd, but I was always well integrated in school", the student from HSHL, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Science, tells us. Christian Schwinne got his first computer at seven years old. The spark for his path toward application development was a gift from his father for his 9th birthday. The electrical engineer gifted his son a book about the programming language Java.
After the Carl-Orff primary school, he attended the Beisenkamp (note: Gymnasium, a local high school). In his senior years, thanks to the cooperation with the Freiherr-von-Stein-Gymnasium, he could attend an advanced course in Physics. As a student he was successful at the Hamm Math Olympics and the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik (note: federal computer science competition) His Physics workgroup won the first prize of the energy competition hosted by the HSHL. Since 2017, he studies the bachelor degree "Intelligent Systems Design" there. A Deutschlandstipendium (note: lit. "Germany Scholarship"), financed half by the Academic Society Hamm and half by the government, supports him in that. "This has the benefit that I did not have to search for part-time jobs and could entirely focus on my projects", Schwinne said. Furthermore, he has supporters on the Internet. His software is free, but many tech enthusiasts support the development with donations.
Currently, the inventor is writing his Bachelor's thesis, which is also about WLED. He is developing a custom programming language that allows his technology to work more fluently. Moreover, he wants to raise the multitude of application scenarios, the microcomputer utilized for driving the LEDs make various different lighting effects possible that way. The program he works on since 2016 currently incorporates over 110 effect modes like Rainbow and Sunset.