Accessory Lights .. and other assorted tomfoolery

[steelkite]

Dissatisfaction with my Inspire's lighting bumped up againts some free time and birthed a wireless neopixel thingamajig.

 

[The Editor]

Dissatisfaction with my Inspire's lighting bumped up againts some free time and birthed a wireless neopixel thingamajig.

I am kind off liking that in a tomfoolery sort of way!

I think you have your messages wrong though.

You should have "All Humans will be destroyed - Skynet is active"

 

[Plingboot]

Nice, do you have any more info to share?

 

[steelkite]

Sure Plingboot ,

The 1st part is an ESP8266 chip, I'm using a good dev board with 3.3V regulator and a built in LiPoly charger, which makes it convenient to use.
It can be found here ... Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 WiFi ID: 2821 - $15.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

Although it has a built in pcb antenna, I've done a mod to increase range with this ... 2.4GHz Mini Flexible WiFi Antenna with uFL Connector [100mm] ID: 2308 - $2.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

The next part is a 'NeoPixel Featherwing' board, of which I've mounted three.
They can be found here ... NeoPixel FeatherWing - 4x8 RGB LED Add-on For All Feather Boards ID: 2945 - $14.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

For power, I'm using a 3.7v 200mAh Lithium Ion Battery, a bit of overkill actually, runs the light for over four hours continuous.
It can be found here ... Lithium Ion Battery - 3.7v 2000mAh ID: 2011 - $12.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

The three NeoPixel boards snap into a frame which I designed and can be found here ... NeoFrame by steelkite on Shapeways

The frame, battery, and ESP8266 chip snap into a housing that I designed and can be found here ... NeoCase by steelkite on Shapeways

Lastly as far as for parts, is a base for the housing that snaps onto the bottom and can be found here ... NeoBase by steelkite on Shapeways

I've attached a photo of the wiring to connect the NeoPixel boards together so that they can all be addressed via a single interrupt.

The ESP8266 chip is set to run as both a station and a server and is controllable via http and websockets in realtime. This thing is oh so bright at sundown, can't really video it then because it just flashed out the camera.

 

[Plingboot]

Thanks for the info. Do you have any info on your control app?

I've had experience with Neopixels before, but the extent of my playing is just daft light patterns.
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[steelkite]

love those .. too funny

So, there are two options for controlling these now but I'm using the adafruit library available on git. My specific code to control the panel arrays is using a library that I wrote built on theirs to automate several desired behaviors like the scrolling text, counting down, and color slides / fades. As you know each pixel is individually addressable via rgb and brightness values.

At the moment my code base not only supports lighting but a cargo system and a 'bullhorn' that I've developed for the inspire so I can't upload a lighting only example for you at this moment.

The real hard part is to minimize all communications which thusly increases range. I can optionally attach to available wifi and communicate a thousand miles but I've got it running now in private mode at just under a mile.

oh, additionally .. There are three or four ways to code the ESP8266.
I'm using the Arduino compiler and associated 8266 libraries. It's the easiest way to go and has the most robust code base.