Chameleon Firmware

Free on your own network, forever — and what the cloud adds

Two ways to run a controller

Both run the same firmware. The difference is whether it has a connection to our servers.

  • Free firmware

    $0 Flash an ESP32 from your browser in about a minute. No account, no sign-in, no registration. It runs on your own network and keeps running whether or not you ever buy anything from us.

  • Activation code

    $100 One code connects one controller to the cloud, for good. No subscription and nothing recurring. The controller keeps everything it already did and gains the parts that need a server.

What is free, and what a code adds

The whole split, in one place. Nothing in the left column is a trial, a countdown or a teaser — it is a complete product that works with no account and does not expire.

Free

$0 Works over your own network, forever. No account.
  • The full effect engine, across every zone and channel
  • The bundled library — 5,282 patterns, palettes and playlists
  • Patterns, palettes and playlists you make yourself, saved and kept
  • What you pick or make, on the strip straight away
  • Up to 10 schedules, running your own content at the times you set
  • Favorites on the Home screen — one tap puts a look on the lights
  • Alexa voice control, answered on your own network
  • Music-reactive lighting from your phone
  • More than one controller on your network
  • App control over your own Wi‑Fi, with or without an internet connection

Pro

$100 One-time, one controller. Everything on the left, plus:
  • A calendar of any size — the events coming up are rotated onto the device’s 10 slots automatically, including holidays that move year to year
  • Sunrise and sunset anchors, which drift about two hours across a year
  • Sports team schedules, synced nightly and following games when they are rescheduled
  • Control from anywhere, rather than only on this network
  • Households, and sharing with family
  • Backup and restore
  • Automatic firmware updates

About those ten slots. Every Chameleon controller holds exactly ten schedules, free and pro alike. That is a limit of the hardware, not something we hold back for paying customers, and pro does not raise it.

What pro does is keep the ten full of the right things. You build a calendar of any size, and the events coming up are rotated onto those ten slots for you as the year turns. On a free controller you get the same ten, and you choose what is in them.

Why anyone pays the $100

Two things, and you feel both of them every evening.

Holidays move

Thanksgiving, Easter and Memorial Day land on a different date every year. So does the first day of your team’s season. A schedule you typed in by hand is right this year and wrong next year, which means sitting down every November and doing it again — and noticing you forgot, on the day, with the wrong colours on the house. A cloud calendar moves them for you and keeps moving them.

Sunset drifts about two hours across a year

Set the lights to come on at 6 pm and for a few weeks it is perfect. By midsummer they are on in broad daylight; by December they have been late for an hour. Sunrise and sunset anchors follow the actual sky, so the lights come on when it gets dark all year without you touching anything.

And the rest

Control from the airport instead of from the driveway. Your team’s real schedule, re-synced every night, so a rescheduled game moves with it. Everyone in the house on their own phone. A backup, so a replaced controller is a restore rather than an evening of setup. And firmware updates that arrive on their own instead of over a cable.

What it runs on

Boards we have actually tested, and what to do about the ones we have not.

Controllers we have tested

Pick the board in the app and its outputs are already mapped — there are no pins to look up.

QuinLED Dig-Uno

2 outputs

QuinLED Dig-Quad

4 outputs

Wasatch Quad

4 outputs

Wasatch Advanced Eight

8 outputs

More boards are on the bench now, and the list grows as each one is genuinely run rather than assumed.

Any other ESP32

Custom boards should work. Choose Custom as the model and set the GPIO pin for each output yourself, which is the same thing the tested boards do — they just come with the numbers filled in. It wants the original ESP32 with 4 MB of flash.

Up to 8 outputs, up to 1,000 pixels on each. One pin to avoid: GPIO 0 is a boot strapping pin and is refused as an output, so if your board breaks it out as a channel, use a different one.

We would rather hear that a board worked than guess. If you get one running, tell us and we will test it and add it above.

Lights

Addressable WS2811 and WS2812 (RGB) pixels and SK6812 (RGBW), all tested on real strip, from any manufacturer — it is the protocol that matters, not the brand on the reel. Set it per output, so a roofline and a pool cage on the same controller can be different products.

WS2811 has no separate setting, and does not need one — it speaks the same data protocol as WS2812, so choose WS2812 / WS2811 as the LED type and it runs.

RGBW is handled properly rather than approximated: on SK6812 the fourth white die is driven as its own channel, not mixed out of the other three, which is what makes a real 3000 K warm white possible instead of a beige approximation of one.

  • All six colour orders

    RGB, GRB, BGR, RBG, GBR and BRG, per output. Whatever order your strip was wired in, there is a setting for it — no swapped-red-and-green to live with.

  • Three white temperatures

    3000 K warm, 4000 K natural and 5000 K cool, so RGBW strip can be colour-matched to the fixtures already on the house.

  • Zones across outputs

    Split the run into zones — roofline, columns, cage — and give each one its own content, independent of which physical output it lives on.

No buy-in, no minimum order

You do not have to buy anything from us to use any of this.

The firmware is a free download and the app is free with it. Run them on a board you already own, with strip from whoever you already buy from, on a kit from somewhere else entirely, or on a DIY project that is not a house at all.

There is no dealer agreement to sign, no minimum order, no annual commitment, no exclusivity clause and no stocking requirement. Nothing is region-locked and nothing is serial-locked to hardware we sold you.

Installers: keep your supplier, keep your product line, keep your margins. Use the firmware and the app on your own jobs and pay us nothing until a customer wants the cloud calendar — and that is $100 once, for that one controller.

Questions people actually ask

Is the free firmware a trial?

No. There is no clock on it, no feature that stops working and no nag. It is the same firmware we ship on the hardware we install, built to run without a cloud certificate instead of expecting one. If you never buy a code, nothing changes.

Does the free version hold back the good effects?

No. The whole engine is there — every effect, every zone, every channel — along with the bundled library of 5,282 patterns, palettes and playlists. Alexa, xLights and music-reactive lighting are all free too. What costs money is the scheduling that has to be computed somewhere other than on the controller.

Do I have to decide now?

No. Flash the free firmware, live with it, and buy a code later if you want the calendar. The same board is upgraded in place — there is nothing to reflash and nothing to set up again.

Is the $100 a subscription?

No. It is once, for one controller, and there is nothing recurring. If you have several controllers, each one takes its own code.

What if I buy a kit?

A code is included at no extra cost. See DIY kits.

What do you collect when I flash it?

Nothing. There is no account, no sign-in and no registration step. See our privacy policy.

The free firmware comes with no warranty

It is free, it is unrestricted, and it is entirely at your own risk. Please read this part.

The firmware is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. We do not warrant that it is free of defects or that it will run without interruption on your hardware.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Chameleon Lighting is not liable for any damages arising from your use of the free firmware — direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or otherwise. That includes damage to controllers, LEDs, power supplies or other equipment, damage to your property, lost data or settings, and any cost of repair or replacement.

You are responsible for the installation. Wiring, power supply sizing, fusing, weatherproofing, mounting, working at height and compliance with local electrical and building codes are yours. Low-voltage lighting still starts fires when it is wired badly. If you are not confident doing this work, have an electrician do it.

Flashing erases the board. Whatever was on it, including its saved settings and any cloud certificate, is gone. Do not flash a controller you cannot afford to reconfigure.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages, so parts of this may not apply to you.

This covers the free firmware download only. Systems we install carry our limited lifetime warranty, and DIY kits carry their own terms.

Would rather we did the whole thing?

We do permanent outdoor lighting end to end: the hardware, the install, the app and the cloud features, with a lowest price guarantee and usually a same day estimate.