The main part of the Orb is complete. I have gently sealed in all the glass prisms and stretched Cotton/Lycra over the top part of the sphere:
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I was able to crunch the code down to the Nano module. I’m left with just over 400 Bytes free. Here are 2 short demo patterns:
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I still need to cut out a section of the sphere to store the Arduino Nano and then cut out a mounting hole for a staff.
I Still don’t have a good name for this piece, however it is coming along nicely. I was able to get all the inside LEDs into the sphere and wire everything up:
I will shortly begin adding the outer LEDs. I ended up scrapping the center strip as it made the entire bitmap too large for the Arduino Nano to drive.
Here is a nice preview of the orb with the glass jewels placed on top, but not yet secured
No its not the death star, and its not some secret weapon…It is a headpiece for a walking staff! The top part will have a huge glass jewel with a group of 8 x 2 LED Pixels inside. Each side hole has a smaller glass jewel followed by 2 x LED pixels inside. I need to make sure the globe will run using an Arduino Nano as i want everything to fit inside the sphere. My main issue is the pissy 2k of SRAM that I’m stuck with inside the Nano. I have devices some code that severely reduces the memory needed to run my rendering engine. Mainly by encoding the RGB color of each pixel in video ram into a single byte index. However this limits the color spectrum and brightness of the LEDs… So I may have to either reduce the bitmap RAM by removing the bottom LED strip…or use an Arduino Mega…
Also big thanks to Instagram user alexei___ for posting this pic from the Kamp Kraken fundraiser over the weekend
Cut up the 1st few rows and lines them up. These strips are of obviously shittier quality, I should ordered from World Semi as i did with my previous 3 pin model. I should have the last 10 meters of LEDs next week and can beggin soldering them all together.
I used the MRAA library to get a pretty good rate out of the GEN2 Galileo. Above is 8 Bits being latched via the clock pin. I made a VERY hacky bit-bang function that pushes out data to the WS2803. And success.
Below is a video of a fully working shiftOut() function written in JS for the Galileo GEN2, driving the suit
Ta Da! Im running a simple test program I developed to test a single WS2803 chip and its working as intended .
Now onto integrating the HTTP server via NodeJS and interactivity here we come
I accidentally purchased a GEN 2 Board 2 weeks back. It was advertised on ebay as an un-used but packaged opened GEN1 Board. So i bought it as a backup for my current project and to test some more razor edge stuff, so I wouldn’t blow my live one. This came to me as both a good and bad surprise. I actually wanted to get a GEN 2 board because Intel improved all the things i hated about the GEN 1 board. But i also needed a quick swap in backup for my project….and boy did Intel do a number on us all!
Things I really like:
Things I REALLY hated:
I’m yet to test out how the pins speed work in Node JS. If i can create working WS2803 Driver in Node, I will be super happy!
I had some luck getting a simple web server to accept POST data and action it by outputting a PWM signal to the pins..This was quick! which I’m happy with. This is one of the main reasons i would like to ditch the Arduino code. The HTTP server instance is too slow to be usable in a real time input system
After some major modifications to the code, I have some relatively good results….I have a relatively stable driver. I’m using the Galileo board on it own and the OUTPUT_FAST option. Strangely, my previous attempt at using this method failed. The data was somehow corrupted as it was pushed out on the data bus of the drivers. I then attempted using the OUTPUT_FASTMODE(which actual doesnt exists but uses a different method to write to pins 2 and 3 fastGpioDigitalWriteDestructive()… Anyway onto the results…. Here is a video of..
As you can see, these are NOT the results we want. I initially thought the problem was related to the size of data i was pushing onto the bus. We have 864 Bytes to push out. Strangely when i reduced this to 18 Bytes, enough to drive 1 row, i saw that 1 row get pushed up the serial ladder…and get garbled up after the 1st push. So i changed my write method back to the standard digitalWrite(), however i initialized the data and clock pins as OUTPUT_FAST….
As you can see, these are exactly the results we want!!! I can still see glitches every now again but they seem to be very fast and get wiped out. My thoughts are that the 2 fast IO pins 2 and 3, get wonky when driven at their super speed rates. I have seen multiple people online hook these up to their Oscilloscopes and show that the waves are not at all constant or smooth. I would love to get my hands on a Rev 2 board and see if these is any kind of improvement…but in reality I’m hesitant to waste money on it as I’m thoroughly disappointed with the Rev 1 board.
I’m taking a break from interactive frame streaming to the light suit, to concentrate on getting it to work in public. I have written some macros to help with animation. In this situation, I would usually just save a long string as a frame buffer and feed it to the live driver(thats my end goal)….but because i have less than 2k to work with ill have to do everything with functions. Have a look if you like:
I made 2 functions(with a 3rd which is probably not going to work):
void verticalStripe(bool movetoRight, bool clearAfter, byte colours[3], short int startIndex, short int endIndex)This renders a vertical fill line and animates it from left to right or right to left…. for example:
verticalStrope(true, false,{10,0,0}, 0,7)Will fill from left to right the block of rows 0 to 7
verticalStrope(false, false,{10,0,0}, 0,7)Will fill from right to left the block of rows 0 to 7
If you toggle clearAfter to true, it will render a line instead a fill
void horizontalStripe(bool movetoRight, bool clearAfter, byte colours[3], short int startIndex, short int endIndex)
Same as the vertical function, but does a horizontal line..I’m working on a few other macros…
There is a 3rd function that renders a box around a specified block of the suit…but i wrote that blind.
Ok some major progress today!
The above pic is an interactive drawing made from the client interface
I have completed insulating each row assembly. I will now begin construction of each row so they look like this:
I really want to complete thia project by mid Feb so its ready for a music festival in early March.