It can be tough to get started with building an Internet of Things (IoT) project from the ground-up, as getting connected, serving a webpage, and managing other devices can all be a challenge to a beginner. This is why the YouTuber known as “Mario’s Ideas” made an end-to-end tutorial that details everything one might need to build a smart RGB lamp.

Because the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi contains an ESP32-S3 chip for its Wi-Fi radio and Renesas RA4M1 microcontroller, it was the perfect candidate. Mario’s sketch begins with a call to initialize the Wi-Fi module before attempting to connect to his local access point. Once finished, it enters a loop that continuously checks if a client has connected to the web server, and if one has, reads the requested path while also seeing if the string contains “/H” to denote an “ON” command to set the LED.

Toggling an LED is useful, but Mario wanted to take things a step further by building a tangible — in this case a lamp. His 3D-printed enclosure features a recessed base and translucent cube for diffusing the light emitted by a grid of NeoPixels. Controlling the color was just as easy since any browser could still send a request path containing a color and get back the lamp’s updated status.

To see more about this IoT lamp project, you can watch Mario’s video below!