Drupal-blue LEDs, controllable through a REST API and a Drupal website. Photo by Phil Norton.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Phil Norton is controlling his Christmas lights with Drupal. You can visit his site, pick a color, and across the room, a strip of LEDs changes to match. That feels extra magical on Christmas Eve.

What I like most is how straightforward the implementation is. A Drupal form stores color values using the state API, a REST endpoint exposes that data as JSON, and MicroPython running on a Pimoroni Plasma board polls the endpoint and updates the LEDs. No elaborate setup, no fancy infrastructure, no complicated protocols.

I’ve gone down the electronics rabbit hole myself with my solar-powered website and basement temperature monitor, both using Drupal as the backend. I didn’t do an electronics project in 2025, but this makes me want to do another one in 2026.

I also didn’t realize you could buy light strips where each LED can be controlled individually. That alone makes me want to up my Christmas game next year. But addressable LEDs are useful for far more than holiday decorations. You could show how many people are on your site right now, light up a build as it moves through your CI/CD pipeline, or visualize the number of warnings in your Drupal logs.

Beyond the fun factor, Phil’s tutorial quietly teaches a lot. It uses Drupal features many of us barely think about anymore: the state API, REST resources, flood protection, even the built-in HTML color field. It’s not just a clever demo, but also a solid tutorial.

The Drupal community gets stronger every time someone shares work this generously and clearly. If you’ve been curious about IoT, this is a great entry point. Go build something that blinks.

Merry Christmas to those celebrating. May your deployments be smooth and your LEDs bright.