Some time ago I built an ambient orb to watch over the build process for the code at my office. Recently I used upgrading it to RGB leds as an excuse to get my first board cut by Advanced Circuits in Colorado (Why buy from China when you can buy from the U.S. at a lower cost?), and it’s turned out pretty well.
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| My first board, ain’t it pretty? |
The new orb is substantially brighter, with colors that are visible (and even border on vivid) even in direct sunlight. I’m really quite happy with the results.
Here’s the board diagram and schematic:
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You can grab the source and eagle files (All under the GPLv2 & CC Attribution/Share Alike licenses respectively). It’s got 3 sample apps now. The build warden for cruise control, a biff for email, and for tonight it’s got a electoral college meter that goes blue or red based on live results.
(Warning, everything is only tested under linux. The applications are written in python and ruby, and should work under windows and mac os, but I haven’t tested them)
November 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Nice! I saw this via the Make: blog, and not having the parts you are using, I just wired up a red and a blue LED to the right pins (with resistors of course), and let ‘er rip.
Your cnn.pl runs fine on OS X, with the right device file entered in the script. It will be an amusing addition to the evening’s activities.
Thank you very much for sharing your project and code!
November 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Awesome
Good idea on just using a red and a blue led for a quick build!
January 5th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Hey this is a great concept, I have a fullsize arduino and would love to put together an ord that looks at a website I have built that simply returns a hex color code based on some IF/THEN code. Could someone help me with the arduino code to make the arduino go get that hex value and make the “orb” disply that color
BTW its only a Red/Green/Orange value that will be returned.