What is skid-detector?

Skid-Detector is an open source firmware project for the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32 microcontroller paired with a 6x10 RGB LED matrix. It turns the tiny board into two things at once: a wireless mood light you can control from any phone or laptop, and a passive network security monitor that watches for common wireless attacks. On the lighting side, the device creates its own WiFi access point and runs a local web server so you can open a browser at a fixed IP address with no internet connection required. The web interface lets you switch between eight animated LED modes, including a rainbow wave, a breathing fade, a chasing comet, and a sparkle effect, and adjust speed and brightness in real time. The security side runs quietly in the background. It listens for WiFi deauthentication frames, which are packets that attackers use to forcibly disconnect devices from a network. It also watches for Bluetooth advertisement spam, a technique sometimes used to flood nearby devices with pairing requests. When either is detected, the LED matrix strobes red and blue like emergency lights, and an alert banner appears on the web interface. You can dismiss the alert from the same page once you have acknowledged it. The project is written in C++ for the Arduino IDE and supports both the XIAO ESP32-C3 and ESP32-S3 variants. Each variant uses a different LED library because of a hardware conflict on the S3 between one library's signaling approach and the WiFi driver. Detailed step by step flashing instructions and troubleshooting guidance are included in the README. The project is open source and free to use or modify.