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Building Your Own Glowing Cyber-Balls?
krezel asks: "So I've been drooling over the Ambient Orb, a cool little gadget 'glowing ball' that you changes colors based the 'health' of things you specify. It can do stuff like fade from red to yellow to green as your stock portfolio improves. However, being a poor college student I can't afford its $200 price tag. I've found lots of sources for super bright multi-color LED's. Cast a couple of them in some translucent resin, hook them up to a power source, and you've got yourself a cheap glowing ball. But I've yet to find any good information on how to build hardware that will let me control relays for devices like this through my serial or parallel port. Basically I'm looking for a cheap way to build a board that will let me control 4-8 relays (for each color) over my serial port, and some info on how to write the software for it. This could be a very cool project, and I plan on making the plans available, and the code Open Source, when I'm done with it. Any ideas?"
what freq. does this use?
This post won't be abused... no. Carry on.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Usually I try to avoid being afflicted by glowing cyber balls, myself.
You know you need to get laid if "Hey baby, wanna cyber?" gets your balls glowing...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Ate my cyberballs!
I would use the parallel. You get 8 pins out instead of just the one. Sure, you can play games with the serial, but... parallel would be easier.
Depending on how many LED's per color and whether you are using transistors or relays to drive the circuit, you may want to use an external power source and use op amps to convert your parallel control to a stronger signal for the LEDs.
Anyway, just my idea.
Sure, I could probably design the circuit now (Since I am learning so I can build my own 160-6m SSB/CW rig), but I don't want to. Sorry.
I've got a webcam, a blacklight, and a whole can of Gold Bond medicated powder if anyone wants to see my glowing cyber-balls...
evil adrian
yes they do they do!
Looks like we have a new candidate for this old poll.
Happy Fun Ball
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Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
* Itching
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* Profuse sweating
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If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Happy Fun Ball: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
A relay is a mechanical switch. The constant clacking would drive you nuts (though, that would also be a good indication of the activity of your stocks...)
Google knows all. Click on the first link. Or any of the others.
Don't you want more than 8 colors? If you use relays, you can only turn on or off each of the red/green/blue colors. But if you vary the current through each led, or vary the duty cycle by pulsing the leds quickly, then you can get more colors (like 24 bit color!).
--Tim
Karma be damned, this is easily one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. It's a ball. That glows. The glow shifts, for example, on the rise or fall of the stock market.
Cliff, give me $200 dollars. You can call me whenever you want. Sometimes I'll hum. Sometimes I'll hum louder.
My
Limekiller
Hook up a couple thousand and making the best_disco_ball_ever!!! ...or not.
...nevermind the bitterness ;)
Or Use them as a product indicator to turn green when Microsoft finally makes a product worth paying 400 freakin dollars for?
I just wanted to congratulate you for getting the phrase "glowing cyber-balls" on the front page of Slashdot!
When I was looking for computer->analog control chips a few years ago, the best methods I could find were:
Build (or buy) a serial->I2C or parallel->I2C converter; you can get D/A chips with I2C interfaces pretty cheaply.
Use a PIC microcontroller, which gives you serial and analog I/O built in.
if u would just stop sticking them in the microwave... that also might help your fertility problem dont-cha-know
the Ambient Orb runs off a wireless network... no computer needed, and you can control it from anywhere in the world (theoretically). To manage that, you'd have to build an 802.11b -> relay interface, at least - if not a cellular one.
Now, assuming you don't want to muck about with that (and who does), your best bet would be to not use relays in the first place - they're loud, slow, and not gradual. Use a Basic Stamp from Parallax and write some code to output a PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) voltage to three different pins - one for each color. (Chances are you'll be using either one 4-pin, 3 color LED or 3 leds (red, green, blue). Infrared or UV leds could be interesting, but aren't recommended...) Then you can either leave the BASIC stamp connected to your serial port and controlled via DEBUG or SERIN (IIRC) commands from your host computer (and write some corresponding code for the host), or you can leave it standing alone and interface to it using any one of the who-knows-how-many add-on boards Parallax sells. (you might want to check out the Communications page - that modem looks like a good thing to try)
This
Mine glow Blue when they lack a certain something...
My "Friend" had his done in Tiawana for 20$. He swears if he ever find that girl she will pay!! but I digress...I mean my "friend"....
I thought ThinkGeek was a close partner to Slashdot. Why would Slashdot encourage people to make one of those glow-balls and don't tell me that you can't come up with $200.
The easy thing to to is to use the parallel port.
You can easily control 16+ LEDS using the parallel port and a couple of transistors.
It'd be far more expensive to use the serial port because you'd have to use an RS-232 tranciever. Using the parallel port you can just light up a couple pins, and depending on what pins are high/low, you light particular LEDs.
Go get a book on electronics, I'm sure there are many good ones with simple examples that'll do what you want.
A little overkill never hurt anybody.
several plugins for XMMS may get you started. They have plans for the hardware to connect a parallel port to leds, stepper motors, whatever.
I Don't Work Here
...you could spend the hours you'd otherwise be researching, building, testing, and marveling at your balls *snicker*, and work. At a job. For money. Then buy the real thing. And have some cash left over...
...presumably to spend on refreshments when all the ladies come over to look at your, umm, "glowing balls".
So I can easily keep track of the ever-changing terrorism threat level.
http://www.grinta.net/doc/phrack.html
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The natural target application: hook this up to correspond to the Terrorist Threat Level as published by the US.
"Going from large orange balls to small white ones will be pretty strange. But enough about my problems. What was the question?"
ChicagoFan
You dumbass, that's linked to in the story.
Definitely the way to go with this. You'll probably want to go with ones with a USART (for a serial connection) and output data to some PWMs (pulse width modulators) to control the brightness. You don't need relays. My recommendation would be to start with the Atmel AVR... it has one of the nicest instruction sets I've seen in a microcontroller, it's cheap, it's fast, and you can get them with HUGE amounts of prgram memory (up to 128K).
"Your mouse has been moved. Windows 95 must be restarted for the change to take effect."
It does look like a fun toy, but not for two bills. For that amount, it should come with a cyber wiener that glows when chicks that are into linux are near.
Hotcakes, I tell ya!
A buddy of mine is building an automatic alcohol dispenser that's controlled via a paralell port and relays. Here's his schematics section.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
I've submitted some well thought out questions about using UML...useful stuff for geeks, ya know? They get rejected so that some moron who's too lazy to go to the library and pick up a basic EE book can get foolish crap like this submitted. I swore I would never complain despite all the dupes and dumb questions, but this is just too much.
guess who didn't click the links?
a cookie to who figures it out.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Maybe that's why it's familiar... my new favorite thread lol
if he uses bluetooth for this. :D
ermmm... ahhh... mmmmm..... Ill take a 50/50 on that please, Regis :)
Relays won't give you much range.
Assuming 3 LED colors (RGB), best bet would be a 3-channel PWM driver- this could be implemented in a microcontroller such as a PIC, which could also handle the serial side of things. PWM will allow control of brightness in each LED.
An alternate method would be three D->A converters with current outputs, but the PWM method would probably be easier.
You heard me. And while you're at it, throw a discus at my dick, like Plato used to.
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The Stiquito book and this site offer plans for converting a parallel port output to useful digital signals for driving actuators including relays and muscle wire.
Or you can just find some similar plans using a ULN2803 chip (including how to use it to switch LED's) online(PDF) I like your idea. If I get time, I may build one and mail you the plans.
I could see using locally-connected glowing globes this for all sorts of monitoring; stock market tracking isn't really near the top of the list. I can see having a row of stuff like this visible in or near a server room for example, showing network latency or traffic load, system load, any of a variety of things.
What the difference between this and assorted other status/alarm LED displays? These are in a translucent block and are more easily visible from a distance. Not such a bad thing.
Heck, I use something similar as a shower timer - it dims over 15 minutes, and if I glance over and it's gone out then I'm probably running late.
fencepost
just a little off
uh ... dude ... you just linked to the same ThinkGeek.com product that the article linked to.
RTFA
Get ahold of a cmos 4066 this chip has plenty of switching power throughput to handle a few leds. Hook the triggers to your parallel port and code a simple pulse width modulator routine to run the triggers. I don't know if the frequency you can achieve on a parallel port would be high enough to prevent flicker, but some capacitors should go a long way to smoothing that out, if not. You might want some current limitin resistors in there as well, so you don't burn out your leds.
BTW, this is rudimentary circuit design in almost any college course. If you want to seroiusly get into building cicuits like this check out "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Might be a little expensive but will give you a solid foundation in circuit design.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
True Sir.
...like the Nazis invaded Poland...
What currently is going on is called Blitzkrieg.
The question is, who's next? France?
Americans just dont wnat to learn from history.
So now tell me what's dumb.
I'd love to read your book "101 things I did while unemployed and bored"
Glowing electric balls, next thing you'll make is a glow stick...oh, hang on a sec, someone beat you to it. Never mind.
Having done some large castings in casting resin (clear and with opaque or translucent dyes), I can tell you that it's not all that simple to just cast a ball that size either. The casting material is going to be expensive to begin with. And if you don't get the hardner mix ratio just right, that stuff it going to crack and craze like crazy (split a few "paper-weights" in half). It gives off heat (from the chemical reaction as it "cures") which can damage really thick objects, like a 6 inch ball. I'd be willing to bet that what they have is not "hobbiest grade" casting material. It's more likely commercial grade plexiglass type material with a translucent dye added. It might not even be chemically cured like epoxy resins but may be cure thermally or by UV light (former - likely, later - possible but highly unlikely). Plexiglass resins become soft and pliable as you warm them (within reason - moderately high heat burns them easily) but casting resin does not - it cracks and crazes and shatters. The dye would be similar to the casting dyes you would get at a hobby shop. You MIGHT be able to cast a ball that size, if you are lucky, in casting resin but keep it away from large temperature changes and bright sunlight (which damages through both large temperature gradients and UV breakdown damage). You may find that this isn't a cost-effective "do it yourself project" after all.
I mean, can't everyone program microcontrollers these days?
I always wonder why people spend ages to find plans for some super-simple circuit on the internet when they just have to invest some days and learn to build one themselves!
I couldn't help it.. :)
what freq. is using that service?
....so here we are, sitting on the threshold of Armageddon,
and the best you can do is: "gimmee one o' them cool glowing balls!"
sigh...America, America, what hast thou wrought? there's dark days ahead for our nation of glowing-ball lovers.
"Building Your Own Glowing Cyber-Balls?"
I already got about the biggest pair you've ever seen!
Nooch.
But seriously, I've always wanted something like this for work. A simple status indicator whether the cluster of machines I'm responsible for is Working Fine (green), Having Issues (yellow), or Completely B0rked (red).
Currently, I keep a persistent browser window open to a simple web-based script that checks on the status of everything and sets its background to one of those colors based on what it finds (it's quite a bit more verbose than just that should something be wrong, but that's not the point). This is fine and dandy for my use, but for the sake of being interupted during an emergency...
It'd be really cool (and actually useful) to have a separate orb that glows the same color... so the next time my PHB runs in to tell me I forgot my TPS report cover sheet.. er.. to tell me that he's noticed a problem with the site, he'll first see the big red glow and realize I'm already aware of it.
(that, and when I'm deep into a Quake match, and can't see the little window...)
I sincerely hope this is a joke. If you even read the question, it is EXACTLY about that toy, and there's even a link directly to it! Are you trying to trick mods into giving you a +1 Interesting, or what?
As funny as it would be to make a comment about "glowing cyber balls", I will refrain.
As far as doing something like this, it's trivial. If you wanted to be old school, you could do something with a BASIC Stamp and good-old RS-232 out of a PC. Driving LEDs based on values given to it over serial is simple. You could probably drive four or five balls with one Stamp. You could even devise an overly-complicated protocol to communicate between the computer and the stamps. They could even be autonomous.. like adjusting color based on room temperature.
Or, look at A/D converters. They might be cheaper, if less geeky.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it would seem that Microsoft has secretly released a beta of Palladium. Sadly, it was installed in this guy's head, which happens to run an old PII 233.
Poor soul.
Informatus Technologicus
First, get yourself a French Diplomat. Noone will miss one of those. He can be your guinea pig. Then follow these easy steps:
1. Shave scrotum. This makes things a little easier, especially if you or your Frenchie Frog have really hairy nuts.
2. 2. Solder a chip running embedded Linux to your right testicle.
3. Solder a wireless modem to your left testicle.
4. Connect the two with shot wire.
5. Spend a week at Chyrnoble, Three Mile Island, or the nuclear site of your choice.
6. At a party, go into the closet with hot chicks. Show off your glowing cyber-balls.
If I understand it correctly, you're trying to keep this as cheap as possible to build-your-own.
Now, if you want it cheap, just go out and get an 8055 microcontroller, and use its serial port to tie to your computer.
But the problem is that it is expensive to program the thing. The programmers for any chip can be $100-$200 -- a microcost for business production runs, but a serious expense if every person who's going to do this needs to get one.
I suppose you could buy 10k preprogrammed 8055s once you had developed the thing, and sell them along with your instructions, once you had developed it, but I don't think you want to do that either. Or if you have sales connections, maybe you do. Make it a College "gotta have" like lava lamps were in my day.
So the cheapest programming alternative is probably a basic-stamp computer.
The second cheapest alternative would be to build your own out of a few chips at Radio Shack, and not use programming, but I don't think that's real good either.
Aside from that, you might also want to check the fiber-optic method as well. I see all kinds of color-wheel art done with fiber-optics around Christmastime.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
no offense or anything, but if you're going to post stuff, you really ought to contribute more than repeating part of what the poster said and including a link to a site that's one click away from the link the poster had.
You could use the same technique used in an older article to light the LEDs. I couldn't speak to the cost, though.
I would use hollow frosted plastic or glass globes over a solid encasing, but that's mostly personal choice.
This would be a pretty cool project. If your interface is capable of handling multiple balls, you could make add-ons for software like Nagios to show the status of various servers in simple colors.
For no good reason, I came up with this, too:
You could make your indicator a Ping-Pong ball, which is both connected and powered by an RJ-45 cable. This way you could route the output from your software to any wall-jack in an office (pre-planned, though) and make simple indicators available almost anywhere with pre-existing wiring.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
http://freshmeat.net/projects/palace/?topic_id=113 %2C122%2C135
For xmms-syncing=lights via a parallel port - I've been considering doing this for a while, and the guys has great instructions
You can also get away on this project with a servo motor, two polarized filters, some sugar water, and one light source. Polarize a white light source (light bulb) with a simple polaroid filter, let the light pass through a sample of saturated sugar water, and then back through another polarized filter. Motorize the last filter and you have a mechanical alternative to lots of led's. The way it works is like so: the polarized light passes through the sugar sample and each wavelength is bent a different amount (sugar is "chiral"). Rotating another polarized filter placed across this output will give lots of different colors. I think this might be how they do the lights in limousines and such. It's pretty simple, but the servo could be costly. If you got one lying around anyways, then it might be an easier solution. Programming a lot of led's to mix colors across serial/parallel communication sounds harder than communicating to a PIC that controls the servo (usign a table for colors). I know this may seem really "macgyver-ish", but it should work. Just throw a paperclip and a rubber band in there and *pow* -j/k. Good luck.
Just imagine what you could do with one of these!
Why, you could set it to blink green to notify you when ThinkGeek gets these things back in stock!!!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Of course controlling 8 relays or LEDs with the parallel port is much simpler.
Since the parallel port output is basically just TTL levels, just buffer it through a 74LS244 or something similar and use that to drive the LEDs directly. You can directly control each of the 8 data pins on a parallel port by writing directly to the base I/O port (i.e. port 0x378 is the default for LPT1). It's easiest to use inverting output with TTL driving LEDs.
Something like the following circuit:
D0 ---|>---/\/\/\---| D0 = parallel port data pin 0
/\/\/\ is resistor
|> is a buffer (i.e. 74LS244)
| (+5) is a 5 volt power source separate from the parallel port.
Make sure that the ground pin of the parallel port is connected to the ground of your circuit. For the 5 volts, a 7805 is a simple solution when using a separate DC power supply.
All of the above listed parts should be available at your local Radio Crap.
When D0 is 0 (low) current will flow from the 5 volt supply, through the LED and resistor and from the buffer to ground. When D0 is 1 (high), no current will flow.
When choosing a resistor, take into account the voltage drop across the LED. Blue LED's typically have a higher voltage drop than red or green. Red LEDs are typically around 0.7 volts whereas blue can be upwards of 3v.
Also make sure that whatever buffer you use can sink the appropriate amount of current. Most LEDs typically will take up to 15-20ma of current. It might also make sense to use an inverter instead of a buffer since the above circuit will cause a LED to light when the data bit is 0. a 74LS04 is a cheap easy-to-use inverter chip that is readily available.
With 20ma of current, choose a resistor based on the voltage.
Use the basic equation, V = I*R, where V is voltage in volts, I is current (in amps) and R is resistance in Ohms.
For example, for a red LED with 20 ma with a 5 volt source use:
R = (5 - 0.7) / 0.020 = 215 ohms. Since resistors come in standard values, choose the next highest value, i.e. 220 Ohms.
For blue, with a 3.6 volt drop you would use
R = (5 - 3.6) / 0.020 = 70 ohms. The closest match is 68 ohms, but it's usually best to error on the side of caution so choose the next larger value.
One thing you do not want to do is use the parallel port to drive LEDs or relays directly as you could possibly damage it. TTL outputs typically are not designed to output much current and are typically better at sinking current than sourcing it.
Note that I'm no expert on this and I'm sure you'll see better solutions listed here.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You squeeze the glowing cyber balls and your computer elicits a coughing sound.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Quick answer: combine RJ45 web server with serial relay driver and presto!
... google for it. They have all sorts of nice features (current limit, fault detection, cascadability and are controlable through the parallel port (you have to bitbang the data and clock bits). The webserver above has 3 general purpose I/Os - enough to control a relay driver.
There are lots of these serial relay drivers
But, you probablly want an actual A/D converter (preferably with a current output) or a digital potentiometer. There are lots of mfgs of these products, but Maxim is pretty liberal with samples (plus they have some neat innovative products!)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The engineering staff has been good to work with as well.
Also, they seem to sell a product almost exactly like what you describe, with bright LEDs in a diffraction grating, based on the same chipset. I don't know if it has quite the diffiusion you're looking for. (But it does have a buzzer!)
Otherwise, my advice would be to use the parallel port (very easy to program, unless you're a mac user and you don't have one ;-) and don't use relays. In order to drive a relay, you'll need a transistor to switch the coils, and if you've already got the transistor, well, you can see where thats going!
- two LEDs and a switch
- TTY control: 7 buttons and 3 leds.
I built a simpler version of #2 last week, and it was a lot of fun and very easy!Yeah! Come on boys, dust off those Wehrmacht uniforms and show the frogs who's boss!
(If you ask nicely, we might even support your re-armament financially, but will deny it later of course)
I'm more of a CS than an EE, but having dealt with the hardware side a little bit, it sounds pretty easy:
You can just steal or buy some testing / teaching equipment from the local EE department... I think things that can hook up to a PC and drive simple signals are common and cheap and allow software to interface with them trivially. My local EE department has hundreds lieing around, though I've never used one, and don't know what they're called.
Or, if you want to build everything yourself, that shouldn't be too hard either. Get a cheap programmable chip (unless you know more than I do about a serial port... it might be possible to do with a simple non-programmable chip that just latches values from the pins at the right time). I used a PIC16F876 at one point... it's basically a miniature computer on a chip, with IO designed for interfacing with things in a programable manner... it worked well, and is cheap ~ $4 or $5 (and you can get them for free if you ask... they give away lots of samples to students). I think it had some built-in module for interfacing with a serial port, but if not that should still be possibly manually, with some assembly coding. The chip didn't have any digital-to-analog converters on it that I can recall, but with LEDs I think switching them on and off really fast for varying periods of time is better than driving them with an variable signal anyway. It also was not capable of driving as much current as I suspect you want, so you'll need external amplifiers, but a handful of discrete transistors works fine for that purpose (and is dirt cheap). The only thing I can think of that you might actually have to pay for is the power supply for the whole thing. And maybe a board to soder on.
Hm... come to think of it, I don't know how to write out to the serial port on any OS more modern than DOS. But you can probably figure that out with a tiny bit of googling.
No I don't work for them, but http://www.ibutton.com gets you to devices that can be controlled through a serial (or parallel) port and are cheap. The DS2407 is a switch you can use to control the LEDs. Also check out the TINI links on the page for a Java JVM on a SIMM which can be used to control the LEDs and connect to the net. Nice stuff to work with.
The Russians? And I always thought it was the Prussians...
Why not use an inflatable ball? ;)
:)
I've seen clear/white/translucent ones... it should keep a spherical shape if nothing presses on it once you punch a hole through it for the LEDs. If not, just use a glue-gun to seal it up.
It'd look cool hanging in the window or over your computer.
Others have suggested parallel ports, and I agree completely.... all you have to do is toggle a bit to turn on an LED.
1 wire each to 3 LEDs gives you 3 bits or 8 colors (if you count "off" as a color).
Instead, use resistors to your advantage and use 2 bits per LED and end up with (6 bits) 64 colors!
Don't bother with relays... they draw too much current that you'll need for the LEDs.
Instead, use transistors (if you find that the parallel port cannot provide enough current on each line).
Go to Radio Shack and pick up one of their Engineer's Notebooks... there's about 8-10 different ones, you'll have to leaf through them to find the appropriate ones.
Look for Ohm's law, you'll need this to calculate the values of the resistors you'll need (based on the voltage and current required by the LEDs).
Also look for one with info on transistors and LEDs (obviously).
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
"Cast a couple of them in some translucent resin"
Yeah, like it's that easy. Have you ever tried to work with acrylic and hardener? It's a MESS. It's the consistency of motor oil and after some air exposure it starts to get sticky. Worse, it smells like paint * 100. Finally, I can guarantee that you WILL NOT be able to 'cast' a sphere. The inside of a small toy ball might be your best bet, but I have my doubts about how the mechanics of the casting process would play out.
Those discouraging words said.... Dude! Give it a try and let us know how it works. Better yet, take some time to think about clever ways to make that casting happen and maybe you can share a new and interesting technique with the rest of us. But before you start too far down this path, go buy a small (8oz) can of liquid acrylic + hardener (expect to pay $15-20 for these) and do some small experiments (more than one!) so that you get a feel for what working with that stuff is like.
Good luck and report back!
Stick a 68HC11 on a circuit board, a MAX232 and a few jumpers and the crystal and stuff. Set it up to do bootstrap mode over the built in serial port of the HC11, and write your software to talk to the HC11 through the serial port.
Use some of the Free IO Port lines on the HC11 to feed relay drivers. Write a little firmware to take parse serial commands.
It sounds like a fun project, and there is tons of info about how to build a bootstrap type 68HC11 single board out there.
I see that the vendor of my favorite single board solution for the HC11 part of the project has discontinued the product so I'm providing a semi-dead link. Thank goodness I have the schematic and code to produce as many of those things as I need. Your homework assignment is to find the equivalent SBC.
The HC11 is extremely popular with robotics types, they're cheap on eBay too. Shouldn't be hard to find your board, or make one from scratch if you like.
Hoave you looked at the Basic STAMP series of chips?
They hanle serial commmunications as well as i2c connections. The SX series would do you fine in your project.
LEDMeter is a existing bit of GPL'd software for doing CPU load, memory/HD usage, etc. under Win32 with a parallel port's data lines... it also has a tutorial (solder pin A to B, as opposed to here's-a-schematic-you-build-it) for buffering the lines through a cheap octal buffer chip, although an NPN transistor array would work just fine.
I'm going to update it soon to fix a few odd conditions with WinXP data sources and revamp it to allow use of other peripherals and other data sources, and allow you to write arbitrary boolean expressions for LEDs.
Mind, if you're going to be switching something larger than a cheap NPN bipolar can handle and you're going to be switching it often, use an N-channel power MOSFET in a Darlington pair with an NPN. Far more reliable than a mechanical relay.
In my orginization class last year I had to comunicate over the serial port to a bread board I made and light up some led's(one standard number led) it even had 2-way comunication through switches on the board I probably still have the code somewhere and if you can do simple boolean algebra you can handle the ciruitry easily, actualy you could just send over binary and whire it directly to the led's if you just wanted three colors, otherwise you'll have to do some evaluations to get the intenisty and such wich will require about an hour of chip design
I wish all of life was as fun as programming.
How about designing a portable version? I would gladly pony up a pile on cash for an orb that fits in my pocket, allowing me to track money, family, friends, and the health of my networks just by looking at the colors!
This thing this where cool tech should be going. Make it small and wireless and you have a killer app.
Check out Circuit Cellar Magazine -- they are a steady stream of articles and advertisements covering just the thing you want to do.
While you're reading it, also pay attention to PIC Chips and Basic Stamps, which would be a great way to control your orbs without needing a PC (especially the cheaper PIC chips from someone like Microchip Technology)
If you're married to the PC concept, you'll also find advertisements for devices which are controllable via USB. Kinda nice for furure serial-less PCs.
Lastly, though it's a bit out of date at this point, take a look at "Controlling the World With Yor PC" by Paul Bergsmann (ISBN: 1878707159). Great stuff about parallel port interfacing.
Good luck!
This time they are on the same side... so no Blitzkrieg by the Germans...
The post-WWII France has quite some power now to kick ass...
What Americans do is what Hitler did. Invade smallish weakish countries, buy others to shut up. But all chicken theater has an end. Hitler had. Bush will. Just the matter of time.
This time others will write the history books for you. But definitively not you.
This product would be better if it could emit various colors of light and emit smells or even coat itself with ions that give it a temporary taste. For example, you could configure your balls to glow brown and smell/taste of salt and chocolate . . . salty chocolate cyber-balls.
Find yourself a copy of the parport library (written in C) for Linux, that allows software control of the parrallel port, and acquire a 8255 PPIA (Programmable Parrallel InterfAce (?) 40pin chip package. Mount the whole thing on a Rat Schlock experimenter board with a the requisite resistors, etc. An 8255 PPIA has enough driver current load on the pins to support a standard LED directly. For high power LED's, you might want to throw a few cheap NPN transistors to function as your "relays". No noise, less power, but not quite as geek-chic as a set of power relays carrumphing away as they switch.
And yes, I've done something like this before.
SVC Cardinal Alumn.
Support your local ET department.
Glow-in-the-dark condoms not enough, now you need glow in the dark balls, too? Sheesh!
But seriously (if it's possible after a comment like that), I've always thought that visual cues are the best way to convey information without you having to mindfully seek that information. It's easy for the brain to see a whole room full of things, but only notice the difference when a moth starts flying around.
Likewise, you could be monitoring all kinds of things without much conscious thought, but be on top of it when something changes. Now, if everything changes at once, that's another story.
Go to www.microchip.com and pick out the appropriate microcontroller. Many have built in DAC's. These devices are simple to use and easy to program.
I've built a number of serial port controlled projects using PIC16F84a's. These don't have a hardware UART, so that function must be implemented in software. However, that isn't hard. Plus, if all you want to do is recieve you can just connect the serial line directly to the PIC with a resistor. The clamp diodes in the PIC will take care of the level shifting.(Serial ports are up to +/-15 V)
There are even opensource PIC programming programs for Linux. Just watch out for the picprg program. It looks cool, but cannot properly read data from the parallel port.
Erm...nothing about USB is "trival." It might seem that way if you've never been down-and-dirty with the firmware.
That said, I highly recommend the MC68HC908JB8 for a hobbyist USB development platform. You can get the package in surface-mount or a small DIP, it's easy to wire and code for, and the tools are good and free. It's a low-speed device, but for control applications like this it's more than adequate. Turn the ball into a funky keyboard too.
...
All you need are the following:
1) 25 PIN MALE DB Connector (like would plug into the parallel port) - OR, probably easier, grab like a 6' or longer 25pin Parallel Printer or extension cable and chomp the end which doesn't plug into the computer off.
2) 8 superbright leds.
3) 8 10K resistors.
4) 8 2N2222 or other NPN transistors (Just go to radio shack and get a bulk package of "NPN switchint ransistors")
5) 8 "smaller" resistors. Like roughly 500 ohm, but be prepared to experiment with the value. Lower value=brighter, but if you go too low you will burn out the LED. There *IS* a formula for the smallest permitted value. I won't go into that here.
6) Perfboard to put it all on
7) 9 or 12V DC wall-mount supply (or similar).
A little background:
The parallel port on the PC has 8 outputs, on pins 2-9 of the 25 pin connector. The ground for these are on pins 18-25.
You can technically get away with just wiring the led directly to an output port, then to a resistor which then connects to the ground. Google for "parallel port led"
However, it is likely that you will need more current than the parallel port will provide. For this you can use a transistor to act as a solid state switch.
Here's a description of the schematic:
For each output pin:
1) Wire the output pin on the parallel port to one side of a 10K resistor.
2) Wire the other side of the 10K resistor to the base pin on the transistor.
3) Wire the emitter pin on the transistor to circuit ground.
4) Wire from the collector pin on the tranmitter to the pin closest to the "flat edge" on the LED.
5) Connect the other LED pin to the "smaller value" resistor.
6) Connect the remaining pin on the "smaller" value resistor to the + wire of the power supply.
ALSO, do the following:
1) Connect the ground pins (18-25) of the parallel port connector to the "circuit ground" mentioned above.
2) Connect the "-" wire of the power supply to the "circuit ground".
You can test this before plugging into the computer by plugging the DC adapter in and then jumpering between the + wire of the power supply and each output pin on the cable you are going to plug into the computer. The corresponding LED should light.
I'd recommend just doing the first led first to make sure everything works.
NOTE: YOU CAN BLOW OUT THE COMPUTER PORT IF YOU DO THIS WRONG. I HAVE NOT CHECKED THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION SO IT MIGHT BE WRONG AND MAY CAUSE THIS EVEN IF YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.
If you need more LEDS on a given output (like 2 or 3 to get enough light), you can just connect a LED/resistor pair in parallel with the existing one (all of the LEDS are connected to the transistor, all of the resistors are connected to the + power supply connection, and each led is connected to it's own resistor).
You basically drive this by outputting data to the parallel port. You output a single byte at a time - the most recent byte is what the leds are set to on or off.
If you want to vary the brightness of the LED's you can actually do it by turning them on and off quickly in software. A simple timing loop which have the leds on 50% of the time would result in the leds being 50% dimmer than if they were just left on. Of course you have to do this fast enough so they don't "flicker" or blink.
Take one of these balls in a smaller form and place it within your computer. Have it's color be entirely temperature based.
As the heat rises, it shifts from an electric blue to a horrifying shade of red.
Get out of your house and find a girlfriend. She has things to show you that
will permanently distract you from projects like this.
If it helps, she will grow more pinkish if things are going well.
----------
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
People who don't care about their lamps having an IP address, and just want a hoopy colour-changing battery powered LED light thing, may be interested in the ones I reviewed (along with a variety of other LED lights) a while ago. There are a few products like this around now, but these ones are tough, and you turn them on and off by shaking them :-).
/me was going through some old schematics today and was supprised to see this post, here's how to get 127 colors off a serial port:
1. You need to demux the serial stream, I'm not sure how to do this, look for the right chip...
2. If your serial port doesn't buffer, you're going to need a register/latch/bunch of flipflops... You are interested in the first 7 bits... or just configure it to use a 7N1/1200 bps protocol.
There are two options for decoding the signal,
put resistors on it like this:
bit 0 > some small resistor > RED
bit 0 > some larger resistor > red.
Make the larger resistor twice the size of the smaller one and then make them both so that when the code 11 is given, the voltage is at the proper input for the diode... (use the correct formula!)
Do the same for the other two colors and now the thing will display any of 127 colors by outputting the color setting as a byte to a port.
If that doesn't work try this:
Another circuit would be to use two 2:4 decoders and select the appropriate resistors for your intended brightnesses...
Making this a USB device shouldn't be much harder than making it a serial device, just watch the voltages...
On the software side, for DOS (my favorite OS), you simply write a TSR to poll whatever you want to monitor using one of the timers (will slow your system. =( ) and output the new setting appropriately...
The basic idea is the same for any other OS...
In Linux you could write a daemon to read some network socket or something and write to the serial port..
I don't program 'doze so you're on your own there...
This really is a trivial device...
I wish someone would hire me to build them. ( alangrimes@starpower.net )
I use windows 3.11 because linux sucks too much.
I was thinking about doing something similar with my Palm Pilot - creating a conduit that, when the Palm was on it's dock, would send statistics of my choosing to the Palm and display them on it's screen - I'd be able to take a quick glance at the screen while I was working on other things to see how my site is doing and so forth. This'd also be much simpler to do, but I don't know where to start - can anyone help?
and you could just get one of those light fixture globes...
Now wait just a darn minute here..
Using color to reflect the state of an object?
Color-reactiveness?
Oh wait, thats only for insane people!
Bowie J. Poag
Actually, it has more to do with them HAVING NUCLEAR WEAPONS (not newcooler weapons like them Ummerakains have.)
All the worlds nuclear powers have permanent Security Council seats.
OMG, I'm feeding the trolls....
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Yeah Sir, you do feed the trolls.
Welcome to the club. We are actually trying to get the longest thread ever. Since Pirst F0sts are now in the hand of the paying community.
A. Coward
P.S.: No War!
Turning lights on and off requires only a digital output, doesn't it?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
I need a black-light to report the status of my portfolio.
some Black LED's here
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
I've gotten to spend substantial time with one of these and they're cooler than you might think. Whether they're 'worth' $200 is a different question and one you have to make for yourself... That said, I can say that the innards are worth more than a handful of LED's. There are significant smarts in the design and execution of these things that justfies, at least, a high double digit price and, IMO, suggests a triple digit price is not unreasonable.
You'll need more than relays...
The Orb can generate a variety of colors by controlling relative brightness of the LED's. You could do this with a set of SCRs or TRIACs and routing their output through sets of bridge rectifiers. This would give you dimming but you'd still need to work out the software for making useful colors. Orb colors are all usefully and attractively different from each other.
The Orb also can be dimmed overall (2 or 3 levels..I don't remember exactly) set by pushing down on the globe toggling through levels.
The execution of the Orb is quite nice and they are attractive objects. That they are wireless without the need for Celular or WiFi connectivity which means they need only power and are completely silent.
Another cool aspect of the Orbs is in the way they can quickly suggest not only 'state' but also 'rate of change' by using cycling of color.
The idea is interesting.... What can you do with information when it is conveyed in an ambient way allowing users to get an impression of information at a real glance wholly unlike looking at a monitor? The 'ambient' aspect of the product is a bigger 'idea' than it might seem at first look.
Lotsa links here...
First of all, the 2002 Burning Man project I did that involved a couple hundred RGB LEDs spinning in a persistence-of-vision-based nighttime animated display. Here is the best picture of it. This is the page about the development details.
The LEDs I used were manufactured by Kingbright. The model I used, the LF819EMBGMBC, is big (10mm) and relatively bright for an RGB LED. I couldn't find any U.S. retailers that actually told the truth about whether they stocked them, so I ended up buying 400 directly from Kingbright for I think a little more than $2.50 each. I still have a few left.
Atmel AVR microcontrollers are just a few bucks each, easily programmable with the STK-500 programmer, also cheap at around $80. I used the ATMega8, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I imagine the original Slashdotter could use one of the ATTiny MCUs, since it really needs only 3 or 4 I/O lines (fewer depending on how many helper circuits you decide to use).
The boards were manufactured by PCBExpress and I was very happy with them. The CAD/CAM software was Eagle, which except for some crashing/redrawing bugs was really amazing. The version I used was free. I tried to buy it but CadSoft has (had?) a fairly crazy pricing scheme that actually left you worse off in terms of acceptable usage if you paid them money than if you used the free version.
The best part of using the Atmel MCU was that GCC can cross-compile for it. So you're basically writing regular old C code but it runs on a little tiny piece of silicon. You'll want to subscribe to the quite active avr-gcc mailing list. Save every message from Marek Michalkiewicz; in my opinion he's the god of GCC-for-AVR development.
I once saw a network intrusion detection systems (IDS) with agents that talk to each other over the network.. in cleartext.. the messages, no joke, were sequences of "QUACK", "HONK" and "FLAP".. bandwidth intensive, but still an amusing comms method.. "HONK QUACK QUACK FLAP HONK HONK HONK QUACK QUACK FLAP FLAP" :>
"...Premium content available for about $1/week"
They want me to pay $1 a week to make this thing to glow/pulse to a particular set of data?! There isn't anything I can think of that I couldn't get for 'free' with a script written in [favorite-language].
(Unless the DMCA applies somehow...)
The simplest (not safest :) ) way of doing what you want is getting 5V switchable relays that basically turn on in the presence of 5V (really ~4) and turn off when seeing 0V.
r anywhere else to choose pins from the data byte. After that, turning on and off the relay is as simple (in linux) as getting perms to the port with ioperm (http://www.rt.com/man/ioperm.2.html) and making a bit go up or down in a certain byte in your memory space (the possible locations are in the parallel port doc above I believe).
:)
Then hook up a pin from your parallel port to each of the relays, also hook up the ground pin to the control ground for the relay. You'll need a diagram of a parallel port from http://www.beyondlogic.org/index.html#PARALLEL
o
I've done this, it's simple and it works... but don't mess up and put 120V through your parallel port. You will regret it
Whooops, nevermind...
"The Ambient Orb is simply plugged into any standard 110V power outlet and it is up and running on a nationwide wireless network - no internet connection required. The Orb does not attach to a PC."
I'm probably right about the DMCA part, though!
I once interfaced an N.C.R mini computer to of all things a slide projector. Used a serial port on the comp hooked to a uart (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) to control relays. I could advance and back up the projector by sending ascii to the serial port under program control. COBOL by the way :)
Allso remember hooking my trs80 to a then new solid state relay using a ttl output from the comp to switch 120 volts ac. Made a dandy light dimmer when you pulsed it. You could do the same with the printer port on a pc.
Use an 8051, they run about $3 for a cheap chip, a cheap Iguana programmer runs around $90 or so... or ya might be able to build an LPT burner yourself...
The Velleman K8000 isn't the prettiest or most flexible solution, but it'll work well if you have a limited knowledge of electronics and $150. You can even get Linux libraries for it, and it'll do a lot more than just make lights blink.
However, if all you want is watch lights blink, there's always Color Kinetics LightOrb.
Try looking into 8051 (or similar) microcontrolers. You can get them with built in UARTs for serial comm. Some can sink a good deal of current on the I/O ports too, enough to drive LEDs. You can do most of the "processing" on the 8051 and just send raw-data every now and then on the serial port.
There are a ton of tutorials available on the web for 8051s and serial interfaces. Good Luck!
-JV
It can do stuff like fade from red to yellow to green as your stock portfolio improves.
So... you don't need to worry about implimenting that sequence for another couple of years then??
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Microchip They offer low speed processors that can easily control that kind of thing from a serial port. Though, you will need to write your own code for it (sometimes the price you pay for doing it yourself.) You should be able to pick-up most of the parts you need for under $30 from Digi-key though the only part that might cost you a bit is the programmer for the processor. (I think you can actually build those too!)
The 90's were fun. The 90's were made of stuff like this. You know, PDAs and stuff. Don't pick on him. Goofy crap like this can pay for Real Estate.
At the very least Cliff is a barometer. If people still has the leisure to actually care about this we're doing fairly well. Look man, we're about to topple a regime. We have "Ambient Orbs" to fill the commercial breaks.
Anyhow, when I hit the term "Ambient Orb", I immediately recalled "Happy Fun Ball", from SNL. Does anyone else remember hyperventilating over that bit when it was new? Difference is that was parody. "Ambient Orb" you pay for. I bet the guy who wrote the "Happy Fun Ball" skit is kicking himself now.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
do it in a epld, cpld, pld. would take me a few mins to make one using that. just use some pull up resistors and so on. could hook it to a computer if you want to change the color, or could just use a DIP, and depending on the value it will be a certin color, or can make it cycle through diffrent colors, depending on what you want. could PWM it as well, for brightness. oh well, want more info, msg me.
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most forgot how it feels well almost mo one to blame always the same
Nuff said look it up on google...
Got Code?
and the point of this article was, if I may rephrase it:
How to program serial, parallel and USB ports under DOS, Windows and Linux? With DOS, I remember BASIC was free and gave direct access to the ports. With Windows, Billy decided we should pay $200 for Visual Basic... maybe theyse days $600 for Visual Studio.NEt to program a simple serial port. With Linux??? I'm not sure, but I'd like to know...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
1) These are available from Brookstone for $150...
2) Delcom Engineering has a "USB Visual Signal Indicator". This includes RED, GREEN, and BLUE LEDs, Piezo buzzer, 2 meter USB cable and USB powered circuit. The cost? $69.00 each... All you need to add is a globe...
If you want to play around with this stuff, Delcom Engineering also makes USB chips, cables, etc. and they make USB development board for $49.00 that you could you could use to build what ever you wish...
In terms of hardware, you'd need the jack for the port, the power cord, a PIC chip, a transistor for each color, and a bunch of LEDs/resistors of each color. Easy stuff really. Let me know what you come up with. If you use USB, I'd be especially interested, as I have a Mac (no serial port). Good luck!
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
All Electronics . The movie industry people call it the "toy store of the industry." Sometimes, they even have a book on programming stuff like you want.
Look up PIC microcontrollers (http://microchip.com/) and learn it .. it's your best friend. You can drive 5v leds directly through the I/O pins .. no need for relays.. though honestly, you should be using transistors rather than relays anyway..
You don't want relays, you want a DAC and a CPU. The combination I can recommend is an AVR 8-bit micro controller and a Maxim 4-channel quad DAC with an SPI interface.
This is a very simple combination to program as well as design the hardware around. You take your micro controller (whatever your preference is -- hopefully it has an SPI bus) and you tie one GPIO lead to the chip select of the DAC.
Have three of the DAC outputs drive MOSFET amps and then the LED's. You can then take the serial port of the micro and hook that up to a convenient PC.
You can then devise a simple command structure to tell the micro to do various things (freeze a color, color wash, random, etc).
The SPI bus is a nice little addressable serial bus (a bit like I2C), its easy to connect electrically and simple to program.
Add some bulking caps and a a pull-down (I think its down) to the CS line of the DAC (when the AVR initializes the line will be high-z).
Or you could get a more impressive microprocessor and port my embedded webserver to it (I just love plugging it)
Export Restrictions:
We cannot ship this item
outside of the U.S.
I wonder if this thing uses "munitions level" encryption, lol.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
...expensive. By the time you finish, you'll probably find that you've spent more than $200. But if you ever get it to work, it'll be worth it. There was a time when I really enjoyed projects like this, but after years hunched over schematics it feels too much like work.
First thing you need is a breadboard, for prototyping. You can get it, plus everything else you need at Digi-Key. Also, look for a couple of hobby mags at your local bookstore, Poptronics, and Nuts and Volts. You may find ideas and cheap parts sources there.
Oh, and do a little searching on smoke theory. All electronics work on smoke.
You can get equivalent LEDs cheaper at digikey. They're order of 30 cents there for very bright LEDs, except the blue ones which are not quite a dollar.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Why haven't I heard of this before? Don't tell me they built one just for this orb thingie. I want to connnect to it using my TiBook!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Or, if range isn't an issue, how about a DIY bluetooth module for the wireless connectivity?
BTDesigner.com seems to be selling 20m-range modules for about $60.
Anyone know of cheaper sources? By now, Bluetooth modules were meant to cost around $5/module (in large quantities).
Attention users: Bagdad will be down for routine preventive maintenance in 41 hours.
You could probably build one for under a buck- Well maybe two- I'd just pick up a few LF356 opamps, build some comparitors, use each comparitor w/a resistor to drive a single color LED ('cause they're cheapo) then use your parallel port to control the which LED's light up and why. The circuits are all REALLY simple, and you can readily supply the power from a computer power supply. I have built things such as this before. Currently building a frequency-responsive LED array for the output of my soundcard.......
I can provide schematics of things to those who want them.
(I'm an EE student, so I spend lotsa time doin' stupid stuffs like this)
Motorola currently has a design contest going with
their MC68HC908QT4 8-bit microcontroller. This
puppy is an 8-pin DIP, FLASH EEPROM programmable,
and the pins appear to be PWR, GND, and 6 I/O
pins. (One of them may be a clock, or it may be
set up to accept a clock if you give it one.)
Start at http://www.circuitcellar.com for details.
Maplin Electronics, a British hobbyist company, used to sell a srelay box to connect to the printer port of MSDOS computers and some basic code to use to control it. The software would be no good now but the hardware might be....
Enjoy!
- James
Vote against Tony Blair's warmongering!
Aerotech make juggling balls that glow in the dark and change colour.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
Come on, a few pic on a web server are nothing when you could have everyone bowing before u
Yay me!
Imagine if you had to go to your computer and type in your zip code whenever you wanted to check what time it was. Your important information should be as accessible as looking at a clock, now the Ambient Orb can make a variety of information just a glance away.
That's funny... I have to enter my zip code every time I want to check my pc clock? What's up with this technology crap?!?
The quest for Balls
(Trust me, it's funny...)
...it's just like a super-expensive, super-lowres pixel!
Cutting edge. Yea, I want one.
I was planning on making kits for this available if there's interest, but that's on hold until I finish a new design (thousands of LEDs, true color, USB).
There is hardware info, source code, and photos at the project web page.
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Dude, I used to work at a nuclear power plant, so I already have glowing balls.
I know it is out of topic as far as your DIY project is concerned, but I went to the Think Geek page and apart from seeing that the item was already Slashordered ("out of stock"), I read that this item can't be shipped out of US. Now, is it because there is strategically important technology involved or just because Think Geek doesn't want to sell to foreign customers?
Quick and dirty way of doing this... Use the output of your sound card. Add an LED VU meter (one with fade, these are available from places like Maplin etc. in kit form) to the line out. Constantly play a tone through the card and turn the volume up and down depending on the "news". You'll probably want a second sound card for this but hey, they're cheap.
How much hardware support is there for the usb end? Most of the USB chips I've looked into seem to do have one CPU as a traditional MCU and another preprogrammed with a USB stack.
Does anyone else wonder why Motorola dumped the 6809 in favor of offshoots of an earlier design?
Just dust off an old monitor you've got lying around. Cover it in black electrical tape so that you've got a hole showing the shape of a ball. Then write software to show a colored ball positioned exactly where you've left the hole in the screen. Place it in a dark corner. Be careful not to cover the air vents. Voila! you've got a screen with unlimited patterns and a native interface for your video card.
some kind of microprocessor or something?
Sounds fun...
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
www.maxim-ic.com
A data sheet
also check out the related products on that page.
maxim are helpfull with there sample policy. If you were to connect an array of red, green and blue LEDs inplace of the digits, you can change the brightness of each bank of them with 8 brightnesses,
In the data sheet they talk about 127 colours with bi-coloured LEDs, if you had tri-coloured then you would get... ooooh.. 16.8 million.
can be loaded by bit-banging the SPI or I2C interface from a printer port. Im sure someone has made a linux driver for it. Some code to do that was on there site when I looked but I cant find it now..
a radio receiver determines the amplitude (brightness) of the red, green or blue part or a tricolour LED. They could have three close together FM channels that are doing their magic. I suspect smoke and mirrors and $200 is a bit steep for smoke and mirrors.
An easy way to get the multicolour effect: Three slow sine wave oscillators of different frequencies (1/10hz, 1/11hz, 1/12hz ?) wired into a multicolour LED with enough voltage not to pop them. Maybe a 1/2 wave rectifier (two diodes) to keep the voltage +ve
please ensure that your media has their collective cameras on watching the fireworks from the safety of the HYATT for our viewing pleasure (when we aren't playing BF1942) and of course ensure that the sanitized militiary footage (that somehow avoids media scrutiny) DOES NOT show any civilians being blown up into little pieces. KTHXBAI
the aussie "media" have done the pre-emptive strike on the war. we now have a "news" segment called "target iraq". now i'm not sure if these guys stole the name from a video game, but hey, it turned some fatcat's executive dial. anyways, i suppose it's the next evolutionary step from big brother.
i'm controling my devices at home via computerl ) which is attached to USB (i wanted to save my serial port) and has 3 programmable 8 bit i/o gates
i have bought mem-PIO module (http://www.bmc-messsysteme.de/ger/pr-mem-pio.htm
under windows, you can use active-x control provided by vendor
under linux, you can ask me for a linux driver
Silly me - I thought this was a story about some nerd getting stuck at 3rd base with his equally nerdy girlfriend...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
can someone fill me in?
The stuff coming out of Color Kinetics
They do a lot of colour changing LED gear.
purty cool.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
glowing Cyber-Balls might be easy, but where do you get the nano-tech sperm for the filling?
color kinetics.
When you are taken to court for patent infringement, you can use this batch of comments on slashdot to try to defend the fact that the idea is trivial and obvious to anyone who knows anything about electronics. I'll send you cards in jail
Colorkinetics web site
Indulis
(about to put in a patent on
"Forward motion by gravity assisted rythmic motion and articulated frameworks"... next time you go for a walk you'll be paying ME!)
Here is my little guide to making a complete system based on a PIC12C508. Might actually try this one since it could be interesting for other uses...
:)
First, I`d go with a PIC12C508 microprocessor. You cMaybe a similarly specced Atmel, unfortunatly I have not had time to look into them too much yet. Anyway, if you search around you will be able to find some hardware bit banging RS232 code for this device, meaning you can connect it easily to your serial port.
Now, wire up some RGB LEDs to some of the pins of the PIC, using transistors to drive them. Put them in serial. If you put enough in serial so that their rated working voltages add up to the supply voltage, you don`t need a resistor, BTW. There are loads of example transistor LED driver circuits on the web, if you need help.
The key here is that you only need three pins on the pick, and three transistors. One per colour (reg, green, blue). You should be able to get six LEDs in serial from a 12V supply, you can just create more serial chains if that`s not bright enough.
To make the colours you want, have the PIC pulse the pins connected to the LEDs. The more often a pin is "on", the brighter that colour component of the output will be. My advice would be to read three bytes from the serial port, and then do a loop 256 times. Each time you go around the loop, you compare the loop counter with the byte you read (three bytes, one for each colour) and if it's lower turn the corresponding LED pin on. You may find 256 iterations is too high, but keep in mind each time you reduce it you also reduce the colour resolution. Going as low as 16 loops should look fine though.
The only really tricky part is the serial comms bit. My advice would be to come up with a very simple protocol. For example, you expect 0x00 followed by 0xff and then the three colour bytes. That way, no matter what state the PIC is in when you transmit, if you send 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff and then your colours it is certain to reset the protocol and work.
Not a complete guide, but it`s not hard so give it a go! With a PIC with more IO you could wire up quite a few LEDs, and give yourself status info on all sorts of things. With a USB interface chip you could even go for a more modern connection if that is important. Personally I like RS232 though
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
can someone PLEASE fill me in??
that change color with how much pr0n is on my hard drive.
Still , at least while your portfolio goes down .. no wait , I get depressed
the toilet you can enjoy the show while it lasts.
I wonder if it could display the fortunes of Saddam
if I see too much red in a day...
Be mindful when connecting relays. And if you want
_many_ colors, you could use simple resistor-ladder
D/A-converters connected to latches. Then, if you
used say, 8 bits of the parallel port, you could
use one of them as "clock", two to select the
latch (this would give you 4 addresses) and the last
five as the value. So with for example 3 latches
(red, green & blue) you would have yourself nice
RGB555 colors, which should be more than enough.
Or maybe use 4 bits per color, those latches
would be easier to find.
there are some problems.
:-(
Many of the RGB leds require particular levels of voltage etc to make them work (I'm vague here 'cos I'm a software guy) - it is not like connecting a standard red LED in a circuit. Also, getting the colours to mix properly whilst still getting the brightness takes some effort. I heard Apple spent a while trying to get the glowing logo on their notebooks to light evenly (and that's just white light!)
Secondly, producing particular RGB colours from these LEDs is extremely difficult as you have to map from the RGB space to the colour space produced by the leds (which is nothing so linear and simple as the three RGB integer values). Unfortunately, this is what I need to do
Oh, and regards the Ambient Orbs - they rely on a wireless network which it states is available across "95% of the US". Homemade alternatives with a simple serial interface (to which we can attach modems, micros or PCs) would be very useful for the rest of the world. I think Ambient Devices has missed a huge opportunity by relying on their own infrastructure (servers, the wireless network etc) instead of providing simple interfaces upon which we could all have built the cool applications mentioned in this thread (oh, yeah and they're too expensive!).
Sounds like a great open source project. Good luck and let us know how you progress,
-- Jamie
Meanwhile, for external data I'll probably settle with the still very cool DIGN Case with a really sweet software configurable LCD panel...
My mom has a dance studio and, for the yearly show, had a set of chase lights built into various drops, driven by a gadget built maybe ten or fifteen years ago by a local college guy in an emergency; the one she'd bought had blown, and te show was in two days. Clacking relays, resistors, what looked like gobs of bathroom caulk holding it all together.
Well, it broke.
Me being a software geek instead of a hardware geek, I figured out just enough to manage to turn all those lights on and off from a parallel port - three big solid state relays. And now her lights can make all kinds of wacky patterns instead of just going around and around.
What's my point? Well, the test rig was three LED's from radio shack, a chunk of phone wire, a DB25 connector, and one of those screw-terminal blocks. Soldered the phone wire to the apropriate pins on the DB25, used the terminal block to connect the other end to the LED's in an appropriate fashion, and good to go.
Maybe not an approved method, but you know, so long as you hook it to an old computer you don't care about, what's gonna happen?
I don't think you want relays to control the colors. That will only give you on/off for each color. What you want is variable intensity for each color, and that means more sophisticated control.
In the Navy, I used to work on tactical consoles that used LEDs for control panel illumination. I always thought the brightness control for panel illumination was pretty slick. It was just an oscilator firing a RC time constant (adjustable by a pot on the panel) that determined the duty cycle of the LEDs (the ratio between on and off time). If you put an o-scope on the power to the LEDs, you saw a 5vdc square wave at a fixed frequency (about 1KHz). Turning the panel dimmer pot just changed the duty cycle for each period. With the pot all the way down, there was little or no up time in the cycle. With the pot all the way up, there was almost continuous up time with short down spikes. The effect on the panel illumination was smooth easy control of the LED intensity.
This should be an easy circuit to build. A 1KHz oscilator drives a variable RC (resitor-capacitor, not radio controlled) time circuit, which controls the transistor that provides Vcc to the LED. The RC circuit is constantly being triggered by the oscilator, but the duration of the RC signal to the power transistor depends on the variable resistance (0-1000us).
For a digital control to replace the mechanical pot, use an off the shelf programable one-shot (monostable multivibrator). Use one of these circuits for each color and you can get a wide range of variable colors and combination colors in your glow ball.
Personal: Incredibly good looking young sexy guy seeks blind gulible girl...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Use the BASIC stamp interface, or something like it... all our art-robotics labs use that, and it seems to be a pretty easy way to control something with your PC/etc. heh heh, glowing balls. ok i'm done.
stuff |
As far as the PC side goes, just a program to output individual bytes to the serial (or parrallel) port as the backend, and you can do all the "detrermine-what-LEDs-to-light" calculations in a heavier portion of code, updating itself every 60 seconds or whatever from whatever data sources.
As for the microcontroller, it's fairly trivial to write the code to control the lights, unless you want to put in stock-price-fetching/web-page-parsing functionality on the chip. Like I said, i'd recommend doing that on the PC and just have the microcontroller doing the LED-lighting work. If you've done assembly programming on Intel or most Motorola chips before, it's not hard to pick up (very different though from most RISC designs, like MIPS) but if you're not that great with assembly you can build gcc to output code for the HC12.
Regardless of how you generate the bytecode, you'll have to simulate it, and have access to an EPROM writer, and maybe some RAM. The way I implemented mine was to have the initial "boot program" on EEPROM which made a request to the PC for the actual program. The PC-side caught the request, and sent a copy of the 'real' program bytecode which got loaded into RAM, and the booter jumped to the new code. This let me update the HC12 running-code as I found bugs, and let me add more features without re-writing to the EEPROM
As promissed a note about PCM. I know a bunch of know-nothing-kiddies are going to reply to this post saying "it's a LED, it's either on or off, stupid" but as anyone whose done 1 year electical/computer engineering there are 2 ways (that i know of) to control the apparent brightness of LEDs. First, controlling the current flowing though said LED (which was not done in my HC12 LED controller implementation, but could have been with creative use of output ports and resistors), and the second is with pulse code modulation. For PCM, if you want a LED on at 80% brightness, you simply output a '1' 80% of the time, and '0' 20% of the time. The cycle repeats fast enough (remember that we're running on a 16MHz clock which (although it seems puny now) it insanely fast compared to the human eye) so that our eye sees that as 80% the brightness of an "on" LED.
Try out the 232DRIO RS-232 Digital Relay I/O Module. It worked ok for me, easy to use. They have some other models as well.
Now isn't it great, come here you can subscribe to a glowing ball where we change its colors using radio signals... btw, if you pay more you even may change the colors yourself... oh and if you pay us $1000 a month we will maybe allow you to turn it of at night, maybe!
.sigh
...the problem of what I'm going to spend my next $200 on.
- uses java and there are many interfaces to the
w ww.maxim-ic.com/TINIdocs/tinispec.pdf
'real world' (see ibutton on their site)
- samples available (free w/o any shipping costs !)
http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/index.html
http://
The Coffee Howto has information on how to control stuff with your parallel port.
I found it very useful.
Hitler's in the fridge.
Ok I've been working with unit that has a nice small footprint. is USB. and currently works with Win2k, and Linux(Linux is still in development). the neat thing with this unit is that it has 8 digital inputs and outputs. so not only can it be used to monitor the goings on of your PC. you can hook it up to anything that will give you an on/off state. It's called a Phidget Interface Kit. here's a link to the website. http://www.phidgets.com/ I have 3 interface kits and am very impressed with them. they are approx $80(Cad) with shipping and everything.
Enough from your pic people! AVR's come in all shapes and sizes just like that other uproc family, not only that, they can execute nearly all their instructions in ONE clock cycle (divide pic's mhz by 4 when comparing) and they are *cheap*. I am no pricing expert but last I looked 6mo or so ago there was a respectable price difference. I understand pic's are popular, but you really need to know a thing or two about the avr's before you say things like that. They're quite cheap to program as well. ( I actually got my avr starter kit thing complete w/ serial & parallel programming cables, 2x20 lcd, max232 & power supply, assembled, for under 40. came with a basic *compiler* as well for all you basic stamp folk, not to mention free assembler tools from atmel, and gcc is available.
Oh and if you are really pressed for cash and don't want the full-featured starter kit.... http://www.danaco.net/avr.htm - microcontrollers that would be more than capable for this for under $5, and under $10 for an assembled programmer. Probably better prices out there too, this is the first I could come up with.
Okay, maybe a few basic hardware References, HI-LED, Breadboard, and Chip Products links would help.
Reference - AtariArchives Electronic Computer Projects
Reference - Electronic Circuit Guidebook Sensors
Reference - Robot Building For Beginners
Global Specialties Breadboards
Eductional Kits USA including LED kits
High Intensity (HI) LED Source Discrete LEDs, LED Panel Mount Lamps, Based LED Lamps, SMT LEDs, PCB LEDs
RF Digital Corporation HI-LED White Red Yellow Blue Green
National Semiconductor Chip Products Catalog National Semiconductor Products
PMC-Sierra Chip Products Product Directory
R.T.Nollet, Chip Products, Australia
There you go; it should be enough to get you started on the hardware. Others that are far better at software can help with some of the required programming resources. If you can afford an old logic analyzer (maybe 8/16-pin, at surplus stores) for the I/O buses they can help you optimize your code. Years ago, (when I did) I would have used, an appropriate Hex/Machine code to do a small project like this. If you and a couple colleagues/friends succeed at this level ... the lessons you teach yourselves and experience obtained will be significant ... not many universities teach at this "wide-concept" "Master-O-None, Jack-O-All" level anymore. Very few Geeks under 40 years old (I believe) would be able to do what you are thinking about even less if they have a college degree that pushed them into a "high pay/viz" specialty at a young fragile age.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
-only $14.95-
* Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Ambient Orb.
* Caution: Ambient Orb may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
* Ambient Orb contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
* Do not use Ambient Orb on concrete.
Discontinue use of Ambient Orb if any of the following occurs:
* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary blindness
* Profuse sweating
* Heart palpitations
If Ambient Orb begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Ambient Orb may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Ambient Orb should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Ambient Orb, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Ambient Orb include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Ambient Orb has been shipped to our troops in Kuwait and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Ambient Orb.
Ambient Orb comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Ambient Orb.
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
True, I've not had to write USB firmware; the chips I was referring to in the parent provide basically parallel port functionality in a single chip and a handful of discretes.
Most people (like me!) won't have the time or technical skills to try and customize the firmware. What I liked about the delcom chips was that all I only needed a host platform compiler for my favorite language and I was able to get my IO hacks working. Its in the sweet spot, IMHO, for a hobbiest.
I feel the same way you do, about PICs. I don't like their instruction set. The HC08 is much, much better for comparable feature sets.
...
I've posted about this before, as an example of proior art to Apple's patent on having computers change their colors. Go to SHINZA.COM and get the Elecom Grast24 mouse ~$US50. It is a USB mouse that has a 3-color LED inside. The color can be set to change randomly, like those glowy pens on the market now, or it can be set to any specific color. [I used to be positive this was software controlled, but the web page has changed and now I'm not sure.]
Ok 2 not so easy ways to do it...
serial port method.
Get a pic microcontroler with built in serial port and a DtoA converter. Connect each (1 red, 1 blue, 1 green) to its own individual DtoA output (with a current limit resisor picked so 5V results in full led brightness ((5V-VfLED)/(IledCONT)= R). next hook your serial port to the pic via a RS232 to TTL converter (MAX232 is a good choice). write some simple code to read 3 values from the serial port and dump them to the DtoA reg (too long to post here send me Email for help or look at the ap notes on microchips web sight) and tada you have a serial controled glowing ball....
10baseT ethernet (UDP/IP) method.
go to
http://home.att.net/~wireb/niode/niode/index.html
build a niode and hook the led to that. I am currently working on new commands to allow the DtoA converter to work for a use similar to this (controling fiber optic lights in celing tiles). A lot more work but you would be able to control it from anywhere in the world that can send UDP trafic to it.
Later
Wire
First LED's don't pull a lot of current but relays do. Also relays are not cheap and wear out over time.
Transistors: very low power, long life, fine for turning on and off a LED. but in a parallel port limits you to 8 LED's.
Now using a few IC's, you can create an address system and have 16 or more LED displays hooked to your parellel port.
Google search on parellel port interface will give you everything you need to know on how to access it.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Not network enabled, but it was not glass - some malleable translucent substance - like a 'stress' ball. Also contained an internal power reservoir - plug it in and then unplug and play with it for a while. Somehow more elegant.
I picked up Designing Embedded Hardware a couple of weeks ago; being a software geek, with no hardware experience (except for assembling PC's, etc), I found this book to be amazing.
I highly recommend it.
If you want a quick fix on how to wire stuff for parallel port, I believe that there are plans in the book "The Robot Builder's Bonanza" to do this. It's great, it's only about $30, and one of the professional societies on your campus probably already has a loaner copy. It's available on amazon.com. Get super-saver shipping if you're on a budget, reply to this with an e-mail addy and I'll even write software for it if I think that your design is sound ;-)
Color Kinetics (aka CK Sauce) makes a line of color-changing LED balls, wands, lights, etc.. They have several "modes", and presumably could be hacked to do whatever you wanted. Some of them run on batteries, some run on AC current, and all are cool. Chiasso carries their stuff. Fun.
-Mark
It sounds like a cool project but companies like Color Kinetics and others have patents in the color changing LED arena that you should be aware of before you go too far down this road.
With a 16 line decoder alone (No extra hardware), you can only have one of those 16 lines selected at a time. Not good for brightness control - Useful if you want to choose between 16 different LEDs, each of a different color.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And since I got about 6-8 inches and all the split ends whacked off of it last Friday, my showers are noticeably shorter.
fencepost
just a little off
...about how you'd like to make your own salty chocolate balls [HERE].
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
fencepost
just a little off
I guess the poster has two options:
Parallel port - Eats his parallel port, and needs lots of wires to be run.
AVR - More complex to design, but easier overall.
I don't see why you reccommended an oscilliscope - For most uC development one isn't needed. (Can be nice to have though!)
Parallel-port AVR programs are simple and easy to build. Atmel did a good job as far as AVR programmability. You can program most AVRs in C with good results, either using GCC, or one of a few other compilers. (As much as I like GCC for most development, Codevision is an EXCELLENT IDE/compiler that is well-maintained. Cornell uses Codevision + AVRs for their microcontroller class, and Prof. Land has had 1-day turnarounds from bug report to bug fix from the author of Codevision.)
For those who are lazy and have some extra cash, the STK500 devel board is $89-109 or so depending on where you look and is wonderful for prototyping circtuits. (Has built-in switches and LEDs, TTL-to-RS232 converter for AVRs with a UART, and a serial port based programmer.)
Some AVRs have built-in internal RC oscillators - Not as stable of a frequency reference, but for many applications (such as this one), it doesn't matter, and it's much easier to use.
Most AVRs have only one or two PWM outputs, and VERY few if any have three, which isn't as serious of a limitation as it may seem - Since the PWM rate only has to exceed 100 Hz or so, he can easily do 8-bit PWM with a software loop. (Essentially, having 8 or 16 software-driven PWM channels.) 8-bit PWM would probably be overkill for this application, even 4-bit might be more than sufficient.
AVRs are also excellent for driving parallel LCD displays, although the software is much more difficult. (It's easy with Codevision, except that only the commercial versions of CV can use the LCD library.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Hmm.
$299 list.
$199 Thinkgeek
$150 Brookstone Ships week of 5/15/2003
Not sure if building your own worth the effort.
My 2
Power connected to LED via resistor.
:)
Transistor between LED and ground.
Also good to have a resistor between the uC pin and the base.
Can't remember NPN or PNP... I really need to brush up on the basics, been spending too much time with upconversion/downconversion of RF and high-speed ADCs...
In this case, the transistor sinks rather than sources current. (In many situations, sinking current is easier than sourcing it - This is inherent in most logic/uC output circuits, almost all TTL logic, CMOS logic, and most uCs can sink much more than they can source.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
sorry, you can get 5 input channels... I only use 4 though, hence my confusion. The diagram shows all 5 though.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
For those who are willing to try commercial compilers, Codevision is excellent. The professor for Cornell's microcontrollers class loves the compiler (and most students of the class including myself wind up swearing by it by the time they finish with EE 476). Prof. Land has had 1-day turnarounds between bug reports and bug fixes.
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/ is the webpage for the course and has LOTS of AVR resources as well as some good example code. Sadly, my lab partner and I never got around to tidying up our final project summary for posting on the class website, we also had a POV display, albeit single-color. (Dot-matrix scrolling sign plus a PS/2-to-RS232 converter.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Atmel (http://www.atmel.com/) AVR series >>>>> Microchip PIC
:) or the ATTiny series.
http://www.digikey.com/ is an excellent source for AVRs. AT90S8515s are around $8 each and a good "Beginner's" uC (Lots of memory, lots of features), from there you can go to smaller uCs such as the AT90S1200 (No RAM, just flash memory for program, some EEPROM, and the CPU registers. Don't worry, it's not x86, there are PLENTY of registers.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It seems most of the posts involve USB or some other port from a PC. I thought some of the point of the ball... well, all of the practicality of it, at least, was that it was wireless. I know the only reason I'd ever use one is because my computer is loud and I like to have it off when I'm doing anything else in my room. To have a lamp light when I've got mail would let me unsleep my machine just when I need to.
... and of course, if someone actually makes one, I want one....
Just put the guts of an old pager in it. Then you could have the thing battery powered and completely wireless. Your server checks whatever you're interested in and fires off emails to ##########@messaging.yourpagerco.com with text messages telling the lights what to do. RED FULL, PULSE RAINBOW, SLOW GREEN, whatever... have that tie in to all the other hardware you guys came up with.
Text pagers are dirt cheap - we probably have a drawer-full somewhere. And the service is under 5 bucks a month for a single person...
-- I have nothing clever to say.
Not sure if anyone covered this yet, but wouldn't you want to duty cycle the various colored LED's so that you can blend lots of different colors. You don't need actual relays to switch this level of power do you?
Meant for firewall status display but could use it for anything really...
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
http://www.boondog.com/tutorials%5Ctutorials.htm actually just that one. can't find the other. -bry
COLOR KINETICS AND AMBIENT DEVICES PARTNER TO BLEND SMART ILLUMINATION WITH WIRELESS
INFORMATION
Color Kinetics licenses patented Chromacore® technology to wireless information innovator for new category of color-driven, ambient information devices
Boston and Cambridge, MA - March 18, 2003 - Color Kinetics Incorporated, the pioneer of intelligent LED-based illumination technologies, and Ambient Devices, the leader in glanceable information displays, today announced an agreement designed to address demand for an emerging wave of wireless ambient devices. Through a technology licensing agreement, Ambient will leverage Color Kinetics' patented Chromacore® technology to provide the color-changing "intelligence" that illuminates its innovative Ambient Orb and enables a broad range of future applications.
"We're pleased to add Ambient Devices to the growing number of companies that are differentiating their products by licensing Color Kinetics' technology. Ambient Devices has created an entirely new way of delivering timely, wireless information with massive consumer and business appeal, and we're excited to play a role in this new and forward-looking market," said Bill Sims, president and COO, Color Kinetics. "The use of intelligently controlled LED illumination for the transmission of wireless information demonstrates the truly remarkable breadth of applications that can be achieved using Chromacore."
"We're thrilled to collaborate with Color Kinetics and explore the potential for real-time information visualization," said David Rose, president, Ambient Devices. "Ambient Devices is committed to the concept of 'calm technology', which takes advantage of a person's powerful perceptual system. We have an innate ability to read subtle changes in the surrounding environment and this can be a means to render information without cognitive clutter. Incorporating Color Kinetics' Chromacore technology allows us to do this in a simple and aesthetically elegant way through non-intrusive color-changing light."
In response to the increasingly pervasive flood of information that interrupts consumers via pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants and the like, Ambient Devices weaves information into everyday objects that employ color-changing light to unobtrusively deliver Internet-based information at a glance. The Ambient Orb, a wireless, glass desktop device, is the first in Ambient Devices' growing line of products to take advantage of Color Kinetics' Chromacore - a pioneering technology that applies microprocessor-controlled, multicolored, high-brightness LEDs to generate millions of colors and color-changing effects. The Ambient Orb is powered by the Ambient Information Network, a nationwide wireless network which transmits user-specified information and seamlessly maps that data to color changes, reflecting fluctuations in everything from the stock market to traffic patterns to pollen counts and weather conditions. Chromacore supplies the color-changing effects that are the Orb's means of communication to users - for example, displaying a linear spectrum from green when a user's stock portfolio is up to red when it's down. It also provides the inherent benefits of LED-based illumination, including long source life, low energy consumption, and little heat emission.
Ambient Devices is working with companies across numerous markets to embed wireless connectivity in a wide range of products, including gauges and indicators for financial services, office furniture, health and wellness, and business accessories. The compact, flexible nature of Chromacore allows for easy configuration within products as small as keychain fobs and pens. As a result, businesses can differentiate their products by transforming them into unique, ambient information delivery services.
The Ambient Orb will be available nationwide in May 2003.
About Ambient
Ambient Devices provides the hardware, infrastructure and services that support a new range of glanceable wireless devices.
I'm not an electrical engineer, but you might find what you're looking for at AAG Electronica. They have serial port adapters, sensors, switches, etc that work on a 1-wire network. I have a weather station hooked up with their gear. I think you'd need the adapter (~$15) and their switch module (~$30). http://www.aagelectronica.com/aag/index.html
I'd really like to try this with a white workout ball that I use as my home office chair.
Any pointers on how many LEDs I would need to light up a white ball with a 75 cm diameter?
Dude! Add up all the time you'll spend reading these replies, formulating your plans, acquiring parts, assembling parts, and writing code. Even if you do end up spending less cash on the parts than just flat out buying the thing, the value of your time and effort is going to be, what, like 50 cents an hour?
You'd be better off getting a job in your campus bookstore and just buying one.
If your objective is to tinker, more power to ya. But if you think you're saving money, think again.
Obviously not a tinkerer,
kestrel blue
This is interesting. I have a basement full of old ICs including drivers, microprocessors, digital/analog devices and thousands of LEDS and other things I've bought surplus over the years for various projects. I've thought of packaging them up into little "hobbyist paks" and selling on EBay, but never could think of what kind of project to sell them for. Perhaps a kit with parts like a UDN2987 octal driver, 8 leds, a connector and a schematic showing how to build a parallel port I/O interface along with some Linux C driver code for $15-20 shipping included? I think I even have artwork for a PCB I made to do this years ago!
Think anyone would be interested?
Then again, do I really want to deal with the support emails from people who can't hold the right end of a soldering iron...
Kind of like Alec Baldwin's Schwetty Balls on SNL.
http://www.cygnal.com The C8051F300 is an 11-pin micro with 8 digital/analog peripherals. It can provide serial access and then an additional 6 outputs. Run the leds through a ULN2003 darlington array (7 transistors in a 16 pin package) and hook them up to the micro. Cost $15.
If all you want to do is control eight LED's from your copmuter, get eight resistors which will keep the current at what the LED's can handle, a SN74LS7405 IC chip (that's an open collector inverter) and of course eight LED's.
Build the circuit like:
+5 -> resistor -> LED -> outputs of IC chip.
The outputs of your IC chip will be the ground of the circuit. That way if you put a logical high on the input of the IC chip, the output will be GND otherwise it'll be +5 and current won't flow (turning the LED off).
Now simply connect the DATA pins to the inputs of the IC chip and voila.
To control the parallel port from within windows, you can use a driver called tinyport. I'm sure you can find it on google.
War(n) - Gods way of teaching Americans geography.
Here at work I use 3 monitors controlled by one mouse and one keyboard by making use of x2x and x2vnc. Because of the large amount of desktop area, sometimes it's to easy to locate where my mouse is. I'd have to jerk my mouse around to see which part of the screen is moving.... and it gets even more confusing when one monitor is turned off. What I'd really like to do is hack their glowing-ball-protocol so I can have one ball on top of each monitor that changes color everytime my mouse was in that "area". It would probably require changes to x2x and x2vnc, but the software part doesn't look hard.
Hey,
i nw ave/
Check out this link for info on how to build a device that flashed leds via the parralel port. Has pin outs and diagrams plus code.
http://www.hackcanada.com/homegrown/wetware/bra
"The brain wave machine"
Peace
Looks like I was wrong about STK500 prices - They're apparently down to $79 from DigiKey... Very tempted to finally order one, have been planning on doing so for a long time.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Just use some 1411/12/13s or relatives. 7 Darlingtons in a single package with flyback diodes. Some of the relatives have eight devices, and some four high current devices ( commonly used for print heads at 1.2A/pin).
Getting rid of the wireless network also gets rid of the $1/mo access charge the company is charging for providing the "content". The glowing balls are useless without a signal to drive them.
Hook it to your computer, save the $$$.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Ok, I'll be the first to say that "glowing balls" sounds really funny.
There are two ways to do this. One is easy and the other requires some hardware skills.
Ok, I'll give some hardware background. The parallel port is really the way to go because you have 8 (count 'em) data pins. From each of the data pins you connect a little device called an opto-isolator. I've seen octal opto-isolators in a DIP package. If that went over your head, it basically means that there are 8 individual opto-isolators in a single package. The opto-isoloator will have the dual function of protecting your parallel port from dangerous currents and it will behave as a relay. The major advantage to this method is that you can build this arangement in a very small package.
The second method gives you more control over the brightness of the bulbs. Microchip Inc. makes these nifty microcontrollers called PIC chips. You can buy one with DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) outputs. You wire the DAC outputs to a FET (field effect transistor, I'd recommend a small MOSFET) and then wire the FET to the leads of the LEDs. The second connection you will make is from the parallel port to the PIC chip. I've never done this arrangement before, but I'm guessing you can connect the CLOCK input of the PIC chip to the parallel port's STROBE output. Then you connect the PIC chip to the parallel port. The final step is burning (actually, this would be the first step) a small program to the PIC chip that accepts data from the parallel port and converts the 8but value into an analog voltage. With this method you can control the brightness of each color
I hope this helps some people at least get out the door on, what seems to me, is a very nifty hardware hack.
-Kp2Sushi
Take the white suppository, and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes...
Right now sells a three LED ball o'trips for acid/X heads that's almost identicle. A plastic sphere, whith three superbrite leds it just changes colors based on ambient sound.. flowing from red-blue-yellow All you have to do is snip the microphone off, and wire something else in. I'd go look at Spencer's
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You might want to check out Color Kinetics as a possible solution. They are DMX controllable, and allow 65k colors. They were considered for some architectural lighting in a remodelling project where I work.
What?
A solid state relay (S101S05v) is not a mechanical switch.
Who brings up solid state relays when talking about hooking to a parallel port? You've never done this, have you? Solid state relays are too expensive, have high hold currents and forward voltage drops, burn quiescent power, and are very large in comparison. In other words, they are simply wrong for this application.
But, you're right, they are not mechanical switches.
Could this project potentially violate this company's patents (assuming they have some)? Would that pose a challenge for openly distributing the results?
4n33 opto-isolators and some resistors. Hook-em straight up to the parallel port data out lines. Works like a charm, and its super cheap.
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I have a project that you can look at to get some Linux source for this and some simple hardware to look at for hooking up 8 LEDs to a parallel port. This is very simple and safe to do. I have it running on my desktop at home giving me the CPU usage in bright blue LEDs across the front bezel of the machine. Looks awesome. Very easy to adapt the code to utilize other values to control it. Just replace the function that gets the CPU usage with whatever you want. Diskspace on a server, network utilization, flowrate in the sewage system, whatever.
My name fits again.
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
I did a project in school that interfaced a computer to a piece of external hardware, namely LEDs.
:)
To do this, I wrote a DOS assembly front end (control panel) that controlled the pins on the parallel port.
Secondly, I built the LED array with a spliced parallel port cable and connected the parallel wires to transistors so that when they are activated, the juice from the batteries supplied the current needed to drive my LED array. ( I think if you just hooked it up directly, via some small 220ohm resistors, the parallel signal could actually drive the LEDs.
Lastly...just hook up the two systems and viola!
I called my system..smart house demo or something, and used LEDs and piezo electric buzzers to represent things in the house that could be controlled via my control panel.
It was kinda a cop out from doing something cool with Xilinx gate arrays but this was still fun and visual too.
Hope that helps.
The orb is now out of stock. I don't know if this is a first, but wow, we slashdotted a product.
1. Make something geeks will drool over (anything with glowing balls should suffice)
2. Post on slashdot
3. Profit!!!
The mystical second step has now been revealed.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
You *can* do it with relays in the same way that the parallel port sound cards worked.
The para-what!? Yes. You hooked a decreasing level of resistors (8 of them, in fact) up to the 8 bits out data output on your parallel port. (With the proper resistance, and wattage, of course.) And at the time, there were quite a number of programs that would take advantage of a parallel port D->A converter. I seem to recall some Disney games (The Rocketeer) and several MOD players.
Of course, not the greatest way of doings this (how many parallel ports do you want on your computer?) but the point is that you can do more than turn on/off a light with a solution you might normally consider as binary. You can affect brightness, too, and get some analog control out of it.
Where this all leads (in case it wasn't obvious):
3 parallel ports. (Install an extra 2 cards and put them on a different IRQ/base addr.) Congratulations. You've got 24 bits of color information and even a marginal hack could string together the hardware and the software.
And you might be able to use some of the additional data lines for other forms of information/communications.
Parallax has a wonderful line of cheap, easy to program, microcontrollers called stamps. The low-end one is about $25 if I recall, and it's about everything you need.
http://www.parallax.com/
Go to http://casemods.pointofnoreturn.org/cpumeter/ , I am currently using this hardware under both Linux and Windows. I am not that heavy into programming, but the source of was pretty easy to read, even for me. It should not be a problem for a better programmer to modify it to his needs.
http://www.cnckits.com - This is a site a friend has that's geared towards hooking up robotics and other machinery to standard computer equipment. Most of the same hardware could likley be applied to hooking up the glow-ball.
PR
When working with a +-5V logic signal like the parport, just put some 1K input resistors on some 2N2222 or BC547's, and hook the LED with a 220 ohm resistor into the collector path.
If the LED's require more current (like a blue LED does) recalculate the 220 ohm by using ohms law of (5V - 0.7V [transistor drop] - (whatever the LED forward voltage is listed at)) / (LED typical forward current). Simple really. For something more robust, you could even use a current-source circuit, but these can be a little tricky for a beginner.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
I had a look at the website and loved your project. Wish I'd been in the same country so that I could have gone to burning man ^_^
Yay me!
The electronics for a simular (but not identical) device would be easy. a PIC, Scenix or Cyprus chip. Then you can do an RS232 or USB connection. (Cyprus is a cheap/simple way to do USB. PIC and Scenix are simpler and cheaper and good for RS232).
I wouldn't go the wireless route like this device, that seems like overkill. I suppose you could do bluetooth or something with a PIC though.
Then you just need some transistors setup to drive your LEDs with real power and control it with 3 fake digital to analogs on your PIC or SX. for a ball you could go with acrylic, you can make that yourself and just put the entire thing in plastic. or you could get a frosted glass globe from a craft store. if it has a nice heavy frosting on it you won't see the electronics inside and it will look much cooler.
This sort of project is relatively simple and you could certainly build it for less than $200. I'd say depending on what sort of functionality you wanted expect to spend $40 to $80 on this sort of project. (unless of course you have all the tools and parts laying around.)
Check out the 'Art of Assembly Language Programming' One of the early projects is exactly this, programming a set of LED's to flash in a seqance. You can find it at webster.cs.ucr.edu
Well, if you're willing to go with USB, there are some very cool things being done at the University of Calgary, and they have comercialized some very handy interface devices dubbed "phidgets" which are as easy to program as any other interface widget. The web site can be found at http://www.phidgets.com/ I highly recommend you check it out.
Don Lancaster's page. Http://Www.tinaja.com.
Ahh.. and not to forget the Terror-O-Meter
The best way of controlling an LED's brightness is though using PWM, and that's a fact. The only thing is how to control the PWM, there are two basic possibilities. The first is to bung in a micro(processor|controller) and multiplex the LEDS in a nice fashion connected to that. The second method, would involve building some (quite simple if you think about it) logic circuitry that controls the PWM from a serial input. The serial input could come from something like your serial port, taken through a MAX233 or MAX232 to get the voltage levels down.
I think that the processor method is much better, because all you have to do is put some sort of connector on the main board that allows you to add and change the method of control - e.g. serial, parallel or some sort of wireless (which would infact be serial...) thing.
You could also connect an ethernet device to the bus so that you could control it via ethernet.
Hope that helps, and I think I'll be making my own ambient orb now. Cool idea.
I would write this in software first. Dont bother making the step to hardware until you try writing some connectors for data you want to monitor. I like the idea of querying a database used by an application (like bugzilla or a project tracker) for some meaningful information (number of bugs unresolved, etc..) and displaying that information on your screen somewhere. Then you can have an emulator before spending any money on hardware.
Ambient Devices Releases Hardware/Software SDK
I know I'm asking for trouble by posting my URL on slashdot... but here:
t ic.jpg
http://v8.emorific.com/images/articles/orb_schema
Please be nice to my server. This is an untested schematic, use at your own risk. Note that the caps need the same value as your crystal's load capacitance, so you may need to change those. VSS is +5v. The only other thing that is needed to connect this to your computer is a signal level converter for serial (max232 chip would do it..) I'll be designing a quick little circuit to do that tomorrow. The source code for the pic chip hasn't been written (again, I'll write that tomorrow). If you are really interested in this, let me know and I email you the urls for the missing parts when I have completed it.