Techinc Wheel

Projects
Participants	Narya
Skills	Electronics, Mechanics
Status	Active
Niche	Electronics
Purpose	Promotion

Formerly known as ARTS: Auto stereoscopic Rainbow glowing TechInc logo Steering wheel

Code

PCB layout and code for the LEDs - work in progress

Things to make and do

This project has several parts: backlit the wheel, mount the wheel to the wall or on some stand, and make the wheel control something. It would be nice to be able to unmount the wheel and take it somewhere else, e.g. to display it at events like OHM.

Painting

Who: Narya

• NO color painting!
• I will fix the scratched parts with varnish

Backlit

Who: Narya, Brainsmoke and Mariejel

Hardware components

For the wheel

• 12V RGB LED strip (needs extra stuff to make it addressable)
• 60 WS2811 chips
• Arduino (diecisomething and a nano)
• 12V adapter
• capacitor and resistor smd set for about 20 rgb-led-sets - ordered on 28-12-2013

Test stuff

• about 60 5mm common anode RGB LEDs
• 5V RGB LED strip (addressable, needs more powerful adapter)
• RGB LED arduino shield
• 5V adapter
• RGB reel, 60*3 LEDs, addressable via WS2801 chips, 12V

Lesson 1: the 12V LEDs are not addressable

And now what?

• Cut current strip to even smaller pieces and use WS2801's or WS2811's for every pixel you want to address. Or, use the current set-up in another project (space lighting or something like that, where you just have one colour for the entire thing, e.g. in combination with this color sensor, in house)
• We also have RGB LEDs (5mm). Build one small board for every pixel. Takes a long time, but might be fun. (needs: WS2811/WS2801 chips, resistors, board)
• Use *addressable* RGB LEDs (WS2801 or WS2811). This is the easiest way to make it work. I currently have 30 LEDs of the WS2811 type at home. Maybe use these.

We are going to use the 12V LED strip with the WS2811 chips, and make pcb's for that

Learn how to make a PCB design, make a pcb according to the example in the datasheet

• KiCad getting started guide
• Component libraries
• Fritzing - looks very intuitive, will try this out too

PCB for connecting a 5mm RGB LED or a 12V RGB LED strip (layout is the same, only the resistor values are different, and the connector pads/holes)

• • schematic of the PCB is done (git)
  • to do: draw footprints for the data connectors and for the RGB LED connections
  • to do: make layout for the PCB
  • etch a prototype
  • order definitive pcb

WS2901 12V magic strip

• 12V
• 36 LEDs/m (180 LEDs in total for 5m), 60 addressable pixels
• Power consumption = 8.64W/m, so 45W for total. Need power supply of at least 3.75A.
• Wires: green 12V (not attached), blue clock (pin 11), red data (pin 12), black GND (pin GND)
• Problem (7-6-2014): When lights are supposed to be off/black the LEDs are red. LED strip becomes hot
  • Tried different data speeds
  • Tried swapping data and clock, different pins
  • Tried different libraries: NeoPixel, Adafruit_WS2801, and FastLED library. Color profiles work (note: it is BRG), but problem is the same for every library
  • Need to read this: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=173363.0
• Problem solved (27-6-2014): using another power supply did the trick. Previous one was a 12V 6.32A supply. Now using a 12V 5.42A power supply. Don't really understand why it didn't work before, because the previous supply had enough power.

Software

• FastSPI library https://code.google.com/p/fastspi/
• Neopixel library https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel
• Take a look at: ShiftPWM http://www.elcojacobs.com/using-shiftpwm-to-control-led-strips-with-arduino/
• Related projects @techinc: LEDLightDistrict, Neopixel

Design a few patterns for the wheel

• Info about colors on Wikipedia
• Make a plan for controlling the lights, ideas:
  • No rotation: colors of logo
  • Rotation: full color SpokePOV (PimpMyBike blog) - based on comments: maybe not such a good idea, since wheel has to spin fast
  • From center to outside and vice versa
  • Rotating colors
  • ...

Mount

Who: justa, narya, control-k

• Location: on the wall - done

wheel mounted on the wall

Control

Who: you?

Random ideas, feel free to add your ideas below and add your name if you like to work on it

• Make something that registers when the wheel is turned
• Let it control X when the wheel is turned (don't know what "X" should be, ideas are welcome)
• No function, just let it rotate
• For now: no rotation