I have lost my way in the world of software and its now time to brush the dust off my interest in building hardware
The local open lab sent out a call for ideas to run workshops over the lead up to Christmas. I thought of a Christmas tree with candlelight LEDs. I needed to know what was involved in making such a model before I could conduct a workshop. In this post I describe the that approach that … Continue reading Getting Started on Christmas Workshop Idea
Remote sensors are only one component of a much larger system. If the information they collect is to land on the internet somewhere, then there needs to be some type of bridge or gateway. In this post I take a look at using Test Driven Development (TDD) to create a simple gateway node. It is … Continue reading Creating a Gateway Node using XBee and Test Driven Development
In a previous post I explored a technique to connect a chain of LEDs in parallel and enable the LEDs to blink alternatively in a series of animations using an H-Bridge. Since the H-Bridge is used extensively in motor controllers, in this post I take the experiment one level further and use an integrated motor … Continue reading Using a Motor Controller to Drive a LED Chain
I became interested in a LED display I saw in a beer garden over Summer. The remarkable thing was that it was clearly LEDs on a bus of only two wires. Even so the LEDs were able to be animated such that they could blink in unison or every other alternatively. I was intrigued as … Continue reading Bidirectional LED Driver
I have looked into using Neo-pixels strips and I was really impressed with the simplicity of use. Now I was curious about controlling a matrix of individual, non-addressable RGB LEDs. So I searched out a LED Matrix driver that looked like it could handle RGB LEDs. My search ended with the IS31FL3736 12×8 DOTS MATRIX … Continue reading RGB LED Controller
I have been looking into developing a device to monitor a solar charging unit. This would be a remote sensor and relay the information back to a base to be presented on a user interface. There are a lot of elements to this type of project and one problem I have been thinking about was … Continue reading Trying out the INA219
Playing with some animations of the single LEDs strip of my NeoPixel board was nice but the thoughts soon come to mind: “It would look better if there were more strips”, “…if there were more strips, how could they be coordinated”, to “Could I still use the ATiny1614?”. To take this project further, I considered … Continue reading Expanding the NeoPixel Project
Introduction I have written about the Timed LED Lighting Controller in previous posts. Starting with the original entry “Stairwell Foot Lighting System”. In this entry I will be wrapping up the project and describing the change of direction from the initial design and layout. There may be a bit of overlap but it will be … Continue reading Wrapping up the Timed LED Lighting Controller Project
For a while now I have been intrigued with Integrated Light Sources i.e. NeoPixels. I knew nothing about them and with the coming of Christmas, I was inspired to take a closer look. I knew I would not have anything in place before Christmas 2017. But there is always next year. Design I wanted my … Continue reading A Look into Integrated Light Sources
It has always been on my list to try a project with some wireless communication. I now have a project in mind but there are a few things to sort out first. I have not worked with any wireless at the embedded hardware level. This is not inteded to be any instructional post but my … Continue reading An Encounter with XBee
Rebooting Electronics 