Skip to content

Hardware

Ambient Light with Arduino and WS2811

The ambient lighting on this project turned out so well I wanted to try it on a normal TV. When making the back light for a second time, I used an Arduino Mini Pro with mini USB port. I did find a small hiccup, the baud rate needed to be changed to 115200 most likely due to limitations in the USB to serial chipset on the Mini Pro (CH-340). The refresh rates are still very good. I am also using less LEDs which may contribute:         “device” : { “name”       : “MyPi”, “type”       : “adalight”, “output”     : “/dev/ttyUSB0”, “rate”       : 115200, “colorOrder” : “grb” }, In typical fashion, I’ve taken a pretty slap-`dash approach to the finish – the vertical LED’s are only tacked on using plastic tape which will most likely fall off when… Read More »Ambient Light with Arduino and WS2811

LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Having a coffee table with a TV screen in it doesn’t serve any real purpose, but if you have an unused, trashed, coffee table and 80cm LCD TV, it cant hurt to merge the two. The table is a brown Ikea coffee table from the Markor range. I haven’t got any product links for it. I’m assuming it’s discontinued. The TV/monitor is an Panasonic 80cm LCD with 2x HDMI inputs. The media player is a 512MB Raspberry Pi running Openelec (Kodi). The table was in the Mancave for a while and had oil and glue over it. It was roughly sanded with a belt sander (quickest option). Next I took measurements of the bottom inner space under the table to correctly center the TV screen to table top. Beige: Area available for the TV on… Read More »LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

For Christmas I installed 20M (4 x 5M) of RGB LED strips, and 1 RGB spotlight under our patio, I then used the WIFI to 2.4GHz bridge (V4) (same used here) to connect them to the network in 2 groups. Now they can be turned on using our phones, etc… But I don’t carry my phone with me everywhere so this seemed fun but short sighted… With the ESP8266, a Touch screen, and 3.3v Arduino mini pro, I was able to create a wireless touch screen controller for the Christmas lights. Note: There is one caveat; it’s slow. This is due to the long delays I’ve had to add to the code to make sure the ESP8266 module actually does what it’s told to do, rather than replying “busy s…”. When it’s finally finished loading,… Read More »Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

2.4″ 240×320 SPI Touch ILI9341 3.3V

This is a notes post for future reference Description: Cheap eBay color LCD display Resolution: 240×320 Size: 2.4″ Driver: ILI9341 (Display), ads7843 compatible (Touch). Colors: 16bit Voltage: 3.3v or 5v (only tried 3.3) Libraries: SPI, Adafruit_ILI9341 (Display), UTouch (Touch). CODE: #include “SPI.h” #include “Adafruit_GFX.h” #include “Adafruit_ILI9341.h” #include <UTouch.h> #define TFT_CS 10 #define TFT_DC 9 Adafruit_ILI9341 tft = Adafruit_ILI9341(TFT_CS, TFT_DC); UTouch  myTouch( 6, 5, 4, 3, 2); … void setup() { … tft.begin(); tft.setRotation(1); myTouch.InitTouch(); myTouch.setPrecision(PREC_MEDIUM); … Pins: Touch T_IRQ – pin 2 T_DO – pin 3 T_DIN – pin 4 T_CS – pin 5 T_CLK – pin 6 Display SDO(MISO) – Pin 12 LED – 3.3V SCK – Pin 13 SDI(MOSI) – Pin 11 D/C – Pin 9 RESET – RST CS – Pin 10 GND – GND VCC – 3.3V

ESP8266 – Work in progress

Thanks to a Hackaday post, I was made aware of these awesome (and awful) wireless to UART SoCs. When I first started the information available was patchy, resulting in the SoC randomly rebooting. After a few weeks of trial and error, it’s some what stable, but still has it’s issues every couple of hours. To get around this, I’ve incorporated a hard reset after ‘x’ amount of program loops with an Arduino. I had a status check that ran instead of loops, but the output of the SoC wasn’t synchronous, when dealing with multiple events from the UART and wifi interfaces. The tester project was a ‘simple’ web server with temperature dynamically displayed. I followed most of this tutorial and adjusted the code to prevent the SoC rebooting so often. There is a script that… Read More »ESP8266 – Work in progress

SoundMate M1

Purchased a couple of SoundMate M1’s for a great price to add wireless audio to area’s of our home. After a short time messing with it, I could only get iTunes to detect it as an audio source. While this is ok, I need it to work with DLNA sources from other devices. Also the web interface looked different from other images I had seen on the web. So I did a little poking around: Downloaded an older version of the firmware and did a string and hex dump to see if there was anything interesting in them. While the string dump was boring, the hex dump revealed: 00000000  01 00 00 00 4f 70 65 6e  57 72 74 00 00 00 00 00  |….OpenWrt…..| “OpenWrt” – Awesome start. Extracted the Root-FS using Firmware… Read More »SoundMate M1

ST7735 LCD 128×160 with Arduino

This is a notes post for future reference These LCD’s arrived during my 3rd order for the LCD’s with the red PCB. Although they use the same or at least compatible driver chips, the PCB is the wrong size for the mounting in the project I wanted to use them in. Lucky they were cheap and still handy for other projects. Description: Cheap eBay color LCD display Resolution: 128×160. Size: 1.8″ Driver: ST7735 Colors: 18bit ? Libraries: Adafruit_GFX, Adafruit_ST7735, SPI. CODE: #define sclk 13 #define mosi 11 #define cs   4 #define dc   8 #define rst  -1 Adafruit_ST7735 tft = Adafruit_ST7735(cs, dc, rst); tft.initR(INITR_BLACKTAB); tft.fillScreen(ST7735_BLACK); Pins: Display -> UNO SCLK -> 13 MOSI (SDA) -> 11 CS -> 4 DC (AO) -> 8 RST -> RESET VCC -> 5V GND -> GND LED -> 3.3v

Basic MK802ii Wall/Desk Mount

To celebrate getting new batteries for both of my digital calipers, I made a quick and easy wall or desk mount for a MK802ii, which I’m using Debian and motion to stream the webcams on my 3D printers (1 each and 1 for the room = 3). The HDMI cover was made by inverting an already existing HDMI plug in Sketchup online library. Although I haven’t used it for very long, I figured having the MK802ii vents (2x sets of air holes) facing out would be the best way to dissipate heat. If heat is still an issue I’d add a bracket for a 5v 40mm fan, and use part of the 5v USB. Here’s the STL file: mk802_ii

Serial to Bluetooth Convertor

This is a far better version of this wireless serial port. Why bother? I use them for configuring Cisco equipment for work. If you have ever been standing on a chair, balancing your laptop, trying to program a managed switch, you’ll appreciate being able to sit comfortably at a desk close by, while doing it wirelessly. Just screw the console cable onto the RS-232 and turn it on. New: 2-3 Seconds boot time. Old: 20-30 seconds. New: Battery life lasts around 48hrs when continuously transmitting. If you double tap the charge button on the battery it turns on an excellent flash light. Good for finding your way around the back of network racks. Old: About 3-4hrs. New: Auto turns off when inactive Old: Stays on until dead battery. New: Smaller, and easier to manufacture –… Read More »Serial to Bluetooth Convertor

Control LimitlessLED Globes With an Arduino

This is a quick post so please consider it a work in progress. I’ve purchased some Limitless RGB LED globes and a wireless controller for them. The wireless controller,  you can send it small UDP packets to make the paired globes change. By referencing their API, it’s pretty easy to write your own programs. In this example I used an Arduino with a network shield and a PIR sensor. The goal was to get the PIR sensor to detect someone in the room and turn a desk lamp on. Part Specifics: PIR Sensor – HC-SR501 Motion Sensor Module, Network Shield – Ethernet Shield W5100, Arduino UNO, Limitless v2 wireless controller, 2 RGB Globes This is the program written for the Arduino. DISCLAIMER: The code is pretty dirty with no comments. It also needs some refining… Read More »Control LimitlessLED Globes With an Arduino