The real trick to home upgrades: just take it one step at a time 😉

Whoever buys that house next is going to have to watch a lot of KZfaq videos.

Pro tip: ALWAYS stick your LED strips to an aluminum backing. Be it a flat strip, a profile, an angle... anything. That way the LED will not overheat. If you stick them directly to plywood or any other material that has poor heat conductivity, your LEDs will fry and start to die sooner you'd like.

One tip I can give when cutting stair steps: start with the widest step first. If you mess up the measurements, you can still use it for a smaller step.

For Night Mode, I'd go with all red, because dark vision.

Ideas: 1. Automatic Night Mode. Use local time and sunrise/sunset routines to automatically switch from bright daytime mode to dim night time mode 2. The mains power is right next to the power supply. Run the cable inside the wall instead of plugging it in. 3. Home Assistant Integration. This would allow a lot more automations and control over the lights

I am a (timber) sprayer, I've sprayed hundreds of solid timber stairs with various lacquers. I have to say I love polished timber, but polished stair treads frighten the life out of me. One slip and your traversing the stairs on your back. Even with using anti-slip lacquers I always advise customers to use some sort of anti slip protection on the tread 1 inch back from the front edge. This can be either a purpose made strip "let in" to the tread or just a coat of lacquer mix with fine sand. Other than than looks great.

I would have considered magnets secured with epoxy to hold the light bars in place rather than friction, but I'm just glad you thought of maintenance/replacement from the start (an easy thing to forget about). Looks awesome. And you made a night mode!

That washer trick at 6:03

You should do a USB pass-through to a socket on the faceplate so you don't have to take it off to recode it.

As soon as he started talking about gluing the risers and treads to the construction-grade stairs, my heart sank for the person who eventually has to replace these stairs. If you think pulling the carpet out is a chore, imagine having to delaminate all that glue in 20 or 40 of 60 years…

For all the DIYers (I just did built-in shelf lighting) Make sure to add a fuse between the power supply and lights, so if the led lights short out the fuse blows instead of lighting your house on fire. Low voltage, but 40AMPS on a shorted wire will have no problem causing issues, and a potential fire.

I would have just ran the 120 volt AC wires for the DC power supply over to the power outlet box on the *inside* of the wall and then spiced the lines in parallel (wire nuts or Wago connectors, etc.) inside of the outlet box with the wires already feeding the outlet. This would look a lot cleaner and still give you use of both outlets. Just my .02 🙂

They make edge firing, diffused led strips that would have worked perfectly here. They also work great for imitating neon signage. We used one to go on the door gap inside a pantry after taking the trim off. Now when you trigger the PIR inside the pantry, you get gorgeous uniform lighting to easily see what’s on every shelf, and none of it is shining at you. I’d love to see a waterfall animation on this.

I added smart LEDs to my stairs in 2018. One of the coolest and most unique upgrades that really sets my house apart. Everyone who comes over comments about how much they like it. I used Arduino with a wifi shield for my first iteration, but the damn thing kept crashing. I ripped it out and went with esp8266 and it works so much better, plus it's a much smaller form factor. Also, the esp8266 allows for programming OTA (over the air) which is HUGE when there is some small tweak that you need to make. Same code, more or less, but smaller and more reliable, YMMV. I also tied my code into my home automation system via MQTT so I can change the colors and modes from my main control panel or my phone. Really cool project. Love seeing more people do this and seeing how they solved some of the same issues that I faced, that anyone who undertakes this project will encounter. Kudos and thanks for the video!

This is an awesome project and thought about doing this in my home, but using a single strip of LED lights instead of one per step. One thing to note: LED strips are best backed by aluminum as it acts as a heat sink and can increase the longevity of the LEDs. Of course your stair lights probably won't be on long enough for this to matter too much, but it's good to know for those who want to have LED lights on for long periods of time.

That top riser not having a light would bother me...this is cool though

At 15:58 I am slightly worried about the gauge of your wire. The individual circuits going to the LEDs should be fine, but the worry lies in the single wire used to connect the proto board and power supply. I would definitely replace those with a larger wire as they could be seeing 40A at full load.

You could start the light up sequence of every LED-Strip in the middle and let it spred to both sides like sliding doors. For the turn off animation you could invert the animation. You could also connect it to a aastro clock (e.g.: Eltako S2U12DDX-UC) to let it change between day and nighttime function on it's own.

As a carpenter who has remodeled a lot of houses I love seeing other peoples tricks for little things, that riser to have the stair tread at its install orientation while cutting was brilliant!

There's a fairly inexpensive stair tread jig you can make or buy for around 30$ that makes laying out treads very fast and easy. Just be sure to add about a 5 degree undercut to make your treads suit nice and tight to your risers&walls

Fantastic project! There’s so much to be proud of here. As with any project that any maker shows to another, there are some things I would consider doing differently, but that’s just how it goes. Please take them as having fun discussing ideas, not as any criticism of what you did. 1. With the darker flooring on the landing, and the darker handrail, a stain or tinted poly for the treads could help it all be more cohesive. 2. For the control box, you could add a pigtail inside the outlet box next to it, and run a wire inside the wall into the control box to avoid the cord and plug coming out of that nice walnut faceplate. Just add a master power toggle switch if you want to kill power to the whole system. 3. Speaking of that nice walnut faceplate, with the proximity to the visible treads, handrail, and landing, a wood that matched could help it blend better. Again, this was a great project with wonderful execution. Thank you so much for sharing it with us!

Being the plug was right next to the box why didn't you feed the power wires into the power box from behind the wall. Then use a small switch to disconnect the power if necessary.

I love the project. In Europe you can find aluminum channel with difuzer. It makes the build less complicated. You can use double sided tape to fix the aluminum to the wood. The aluminum also disipates the heat of the led.

Wonder if you could do vibration sensors on every (or every other) step instead. Could make your stairs into a piano and trigger whatever other fun animations you want ("splash" effects, for example, that span adjacent steps). You could even make it into a simple game you play on either end of the stairs if you had that resolution.

With this concept I could finally make my dream a reality, _piano stairs_ It would make falling down the stairs so much more musically palatable!

I think this idea is fantastic, and I would totally be okay with seeing this become a common addition to houses.

As the guy who employs the "Measure once. Cut Eleventeen times" technique, Your forewarnings about certain areas not guaranteed to be necessarily equal are very much appreciated.

Looks awesome! I would add an option to only light them up only if it is dark, either by looking at the current time (evening, night, early morning), or use a sensor for that 🙂

That programming sequence. 😂😂😂

Here in Germany carpet is nearly always glued down, mostly with double sided tape. Also while i like the idea with the project box, would'nt it be better and more clean to power it from inside the wall instead of with the plug outside? There is an outlet right next to it which should give you AC.

I honestly applaud you for finishing the stairs before the LEDs - I could never do that because my bad luck indicates that I would mess up something on the wiring, and need to redo it

What you really need is some servos and locks to turn that staircase into a ramp, keeping ruffians from getting to the cannon loaded with grapeshot at the top of the stairs. Also provides a nice boost for a three-edged bayonet stab.

Epic build

14:43 There are aluminium profiles specaly made for those LED strpis. You get them in diffrent angles and also diffrent diffusers

Awesome project! I'd recommend mounting the LED strips to something like aluminum, something that will help them dissipate heat. If you're not running the LEDs at full power, it most likely won't be an issue, but allowing LED strips to get rid of any heat they generate can really help expand their lifespan.

While I love the aesthetic of hardwood, I feel a little wary of hardwood stairs. Although they're fine barefoot they have less friction with socks, and the idea of slipping and hitting the wood sounds painful. I slipped on my stairs a while back, and the carpet honestly saved me. I banged my butt, but the extra cushion meant that I came out of it totally fine, if rather startled. If that had been hardwood I could easily have broken something

Those stairs look amazing. After all this time, you still impress me.

Turned out nice! I thought you were going to use pressure switches for the lights

You want to leave a space between the stairs and the kickboard. This will prevent squeaks in the stairs that will (I'm serious) DRIVE YOU CRAZY! Then go back over the gaps with trim and cover the gaps.

It looks great! Perhaps a whole staircase “breathing” mode or slow pulse waves

This channel, team and fan base are amazing. Bob and the entire ILTMS team, you keep going and making this world a better place.

The single wire going from the board to the power supply can definitely not handle all that power at full load, the gauge is too small, this could be a fire hazard. I also recommend just installing wled so you can control it from your phone, since it is an esp after all it has wifi capabilities.

oh man... you're SO lucky... here in Germany, carpets are normaly GLUED! and if you're unlucky... its even full-cover-glued!

40 amps and 22 gauge wires sounds like a potential fire hazard in the event of any short circuit

Awesome idea, this gets on my todo-list! However, I think the soldering on the perfboard for splitting the powersupply would not be able to sustain the 40 Amps of your powersupply! Please be aware of the risks these high-currents potentially come with.

Why didn’t u use diffuserbars and hold them with clips below the staircases?

I don't have a flight of stairs in my house, but now I really wish I had stairs so I could do something like this. The part I liked the most was when you applied the polyurethane which made the Oak really pop.

I tend to keep stairs carpeted for safety. I know that hardwood stairs look better but hardwood stairs can kill you if you fall - and believe me sometime somebody will fall.

Good work, Bob! I've seen this before with LED's and wondered how it was done ... now I know at least one way that it's done. Thanks!

Look cool but i feel like you need some fuse on each strip... with a 40A 12V PS , if a wire ever short or a led strip malfunction the small wire you used would catch on fire long before your breakerTrip... You should used bigger wire to go from the power supply to the distribution board, then a fuse to protect each of the smaller wire. Except that great project & video, might do something similar when I redo my stairs !

Remember when Bob hated the jigsaw? Pepperidge Farm remembers 😄

Need a Lego? Find one by destroying your staircase carpet.

Be careful with that power supply overheating. I used those power supplies when installing cameras (12v. pulling around 10 amps) and they needed a fan because of how how they got. Now these cams were running constantly so it may not matter, but check just to be safe.

The stairs definitely needs a cylon/knight rider red mode. :)

Nice! Add an easeInOutSine to the on/off transition of each light to make the transition between each stair seem smoother.

I think you should add a mode that makes all the stairs dim except the one your walking on so it follows you up.

Great looking stairs ! Honest question, is that gauge of wire sufficient for 40A? It seems thin. My knowledge is coming from 3D printer heater beds that often use much less amperage

For a fun trick you should create a mode that animates *towards* you while you're walking up or down the stairs - so when walking up the animation flows downwards and vice versa. I could see it being a little trippy

I had this same idea, however I wanted to install capacitive pressure sensors or something similar on each step and light up +/-2 steps from where you are standing.

For mounting those channels, consider magnets next time. A flush set magnet on a piece of LED lighting track w magnets inside would work well. Also consider a right angle Edison plug for the HV power. Cool video!

Looks great but I have a few comments. Take it or leave it. I'd never bury a power supply in the wall. I'd have put that in the basement low on a block wall with a smoke alarm in the area. I've seen those things melt down before. Fire likes to travel up so I bring the wires out the bottom and go to the side and then up. Seems safer. If I used a RGB strip (like you did) l would fuse each led strip separately with the smallest fuse I could get away with but all that could be avoided with 12 volt addressable LED's and just inject power and ground a few places if it got long. Probably on each end and the middle. More coding (maybe?) but less wiring (for sure). Then you could have used a ESP32 and had Over The Air programing. I'm running 32 feet with a ESP32 without a level shifter no problem but you could always add one if you wanted to. The only drawback to addressable LED's would be if part of the strip failed. You'd have to build it with connectors on each end of each strip. No biggie though. Comments welcome....

I made something similar using the new Aqara presence sensor and individually addressable strips. Works pretty well and can turn on when you are a certain distance from the sensor along the path of the stairs. So if on the bottom, first 3 steps light up, if on top then only those 3 turn on, middle/etc.

I did the winding stair treads in my house with my uncles help. We templates every step with strips of 1/8 plywood and hot glue. So helpful for getting the treads right.

You can use the radar sensors similar to the one GreatScott used in his garage alarm system. They are a great replacement for the PIR sensors. That way, you can conceal it inside the wall, and it would still work as intended with nothing visible 😊

I just wish the power cord didn't come out of the wall just to plug back into the wall...

I did this to all my stairs 3-4 years ago and it's controlled by Home Assistant scenes. Freaking awesome.

I love LED's added to pretty much anything....but it hurt watching you make a diffuser for all those sections when I know they make better LED strip lights now with a built in diffuser and the LED's are smaller and closer together so you can't see individual bulbs

I feel like you could put speakers in the stair well and do some fun sounds as people are going up or down the stairs.

I like how this guy takes it ONE STEP at a time.

Awesome! I’m keeping this one in mind for upcoming stairs renovation of my own ^^

3:58 In the UK, that 'skirting' is a structural part of the staircase called a stringer...

Cloud City Style Red Steps like when Vader fights Luke

Someone has probably already mentioned but something like the aqara presence sensor might of been suitable instead of the motion sensors. Then one at the top/bottom to detect where abouts you are on the stairs and light up accordingly.

Cool project. only potential concern is the heat output of the power supply. Are you able to measure temperature inside the box and see if a fan might be required?? unsure if arduino has temperature sensors (beyond the CPU) to be able to use that to measure ambient temps?

Cool work. Advice to anyone considering doing similar, check local building code first, burried wiring is not allowed unless its ceritifed for in-wall

Definitely play around with some fade settings! Fade on and off so it looks more fluid as you approach the stairs. So clean!

For a lot of people, cutting away or unscrewing (and later replacing) the back of the stairs is going to be an easier way to manage cabling.

14:02 don't want to see the box so walnut to dress it up... 16:58 Power Cord is visible outside the unseen project box? Why not tap off the back of the junction box to put a plug on the inside of your wall and make it unseen? Cool project, great results! love your channel!

I made something similar about a decade ago. I used a uno and 2 tlc5940 ic's. And a bunch of pnp transistors. And 2 pirs. I only used white led strips. Yours looks great.

LOVE the lights! Safety note: Hardwood steps can be slippery. Socks, or something on your soles (moisture, oil/grease etc.) can be dangerous. This is why you often see carpeted stairs even in homes with all hard floors.

You have to do a rainbow mode also tie it in to weather so the brightness changers with regards to what the weather is doing. But nice work really looks good

Wild, over-the-top project! One thing I may have missed: the add-on tread approach would make your bottom step taller than the rest by 3/4” or whatever the tread thickness is, and the top tread shorter by the same amount, yes? (It looks like it on the Andy Bird clip at 2:48.) If there was a mitigation for that I may have just missed it. That’s pretty far out of the recommended variation, and would seem to create a trip hazard at both ends. I’m not sure that’s how those treads are intended to be used 🧐

I did a similar project three years ago (covid lockdown), but used load cells for each step. However I first did the steps and than updated the side covers and using a router I made room for a tiny U-rail. I placed the U rail (with the top of the U facing away) in the side cover, put some double sided tape on the back of the U rail and placed it against the wall, traced the outlines and than glued it to the wall. Run the wires for the load cells and in the U rail and connect them to the control board in the closet under the stairs. The setup of placing the side covers over the step covers has one drawback, if you ever need to replace on the covers, you need to remove the side covers to get access to the full step cover. The benefit is that there is no visible seam between the cover and the step because the side covers rest on top of the step cover, while otherwise you have a small visible seam between the step and side cover. During the night we have a night mode which sets brightness to each step to 25% (nightlight mode), once a step detects pressure (e.g. someone stands on them) it lights up two steps before and two steps after (sliding lighting technique), but will only increase brightness to 40%. Enough light to see where you're going, but not enough to wake up the whole neighborhood... We also have a lighting keyboard mode which only lights up the step which detects the pressure. Because the load cell knows the maximum weight of the person on the step (e.g. when you take on foot off the step to place it on the next, all the (your) weight is on a single step making it a scale. The load cells have such a high accuracy I can use it to determine who is actually on the step and based on that change the color of the lighting. My girlfriend made me loose that part of the code (i.e. over my dead body you are weighing people). In the hallway I have used ultrasound sensors (they are extremely cheap) and placed them on a 2 ft interval in the hallways, meaning I can also detect movement in the hallways. We have led spots in our hallways and use the same nightlight trick as with the stairs. But I have a several full computers in the closet under the stairs that controls (almost) everything in my house. Lighting, curtains, airco, heating, blinds, windows (I have build-in actuators in the frames that can open/close some of the windows) and it can even change our bathroom windows from transparent to translucent and vice versa because we have electrochromic glass there. Once you lock the door (lockbolt presses a button in the doorframe) it becomes frosted, once you unlock it is transparent again. I get to automate our house and my girlfriends ends up with a beautiful house (I only build, she chooses everything, I really have bad taste when it comes to interior design or clothes)...

I think after watching the video, if I were to do the same thing, I'd simply put a motion sensor around the top step and another around the bottom step. Then program it to start the animation depending on which step you step on first, and then possibly program a similar animation for turning them back off when you step off of the stairs, if that makes sense.

The comment .. "I'm me so, I'm not going to stop." I say that every project i do.. and what was simple is now hard.. LOL..

Make the box biger. Order a new power supply with a battery charge/discharge circuit and put in a small 12v 9ah battery. This will keep it powered when power is out. I would set it in an emergaby mode for that maybe a red color or flashing so you know whats going on. You could take it to the next level and get smart fire/carbon monoxide sensors and create an "emergancy" mode. It maybe flashes and lights up in the direction of going down the stairs. Help direct the family to get out.

Love your channel. I am so going to try out your course. Thank you so much for all your videos.

Do i need to redo my basement stairs right now? No, but i certainly want to. Also, when did Bob get a tattoo!?

Cool project. Use an ESP8266 or ESP32 and it can be tied into Home Assistant for even more automation options. I'd ha e to use a beam break at the top so it didn't turn on when just walking down the hall.

I wanted to do this with a set of metal spiral stairs in my last place, but instead of motion controls i was thinking of seeing if i could detect footsteps with piezo electric transducers.

“Hey I found a Lego” Truer words have never been spoken

How hard would it be to put a pressure sensor to each stair (instead of the ir sensor on the handrail) so that it lights up each step as you go up or down?

I actually thought you were gonna use a piezoelectric sensor under each tread to lit it up as you step on it, then I thought you were gonna program the mention sensor to detect the presence on a thread given a given angle and then light up the tread you're standing on ... but maybe that's even more complicated code than you had to write up for that (not to mention piezoelectric sensors are probably not cheap)

Very nice, love it. Youmade it look easy....even though it was a little difficult

Ah, took the video to understand how you were wiring it. I had forgotten you don't have proper walls in the States, but instead wooden frames with huge gaps covered by plaster board. Does make putting wiring in everywhere easier. Looks good, but too much hassle for my liking. Thanks for showing it anyway.

2 sides of the stairs are "never paralel" mark my words

You should consider upgrading the cables from the PSU to the distribution-board. Those are way to small to handle 40A of current. Also consider adding a fuse on the dc side in order to prevent further damage when something shorts out.

Since he old treads didn't go under the side trim, you could have just pulled them up and replaced them with the new treads, and run the wired underneath as well. Also, you wouldn't end up with the bottom step being 3/4" too high, and the top one too short.

Looks awesome, but I am confused about one thing in your setup. Your control box was mounted in the wall right next to an outlet. Why would you put a hole in that beautiful box and run a power cord? Why not just hardwire it in, or wire a second outlet inside the wall or in the box?