The MagicRadio - feat. The Jungle Cruise's Albert Awol

[yaksplat]

I love combining hardware and software. I made a bill cipher wood carving that "talks" when you push his tie, a Zelda treasure chest and a Firefly simulation. The fireflies were the most fun, as they mimic a random species each night, so the program is always different. It was pretty cool designing my own pi hat and having it fabbed at aisler. Unfortunately I have more projects than time.

 

[GlacierGlacier]

I love combining hardware and software. I made a bill cipher wood carving that "talks" when you push his tie, a Zelda treasure chest and a Firefly simulation. The fireflies were the most fun, as they mimic a random species each night, so the program is always different. It was pretty cool designing my own pi hat and having it fabbed at aisler. Unfortunately I have more projects than time.View attachment 300962View attachment 300963View attachment 300964

That project looks amazing. What does the PCB do? I see the resistors for the LEDs wired in, but what are the chips for? Expanding the output of the GPIO pins? Or are you using them to vary the brightness of the LEDs?

And do you have a video of it working? It's a beautiful project.

 

[yaksplat]

Multiple PCBs can be chained together by attaching +, -, SDA, and SCL pins. SCA and SCL communicate over the I2C interface. The chips expand the output to 16/ I2C address, which is addressed via jumper on the pins labelled 1 & 0. First chip is addressed 000, then 001 and so on. I was looking at PWM for the brightness, but then expanding the output was going to be pricier and i realized that I didn't need to fade everything in and out since the flashes were so quick. The plant material is fake boxwood that's used for fence covering.

All of the firefly data is stored in an xml file that was generated from this sheet: https://www.massaudubon.org/content...reflyWatch_detailed-firefly-flashes-chart.pdf

Each night it goes on 1 hour after sunset based on coordinates saved in the config file and then it stay on until midnight. Each half hour or so, the program regenerates the flash program based on a random species. Half of the led's are designated as male and are paired up with the other half as female. So for each male flash, there's a corresponding female flash which is different in duration and quantity. I'll have to upload the final code to github.

Here a video i took a few months ago:

 

[yaksplat]

Just curious. Any reason that you used an arduino instead of just using an MCP3008 ADC chip to get the pot value? I know you did the whirlwind build and i'm going slow roll over here.

 

[GlacierGlacier]

Just curious. Any reason that you used an arduino instead of just using an MCP3008 ADC chip to get the pot value? I know you did the whirlwind build and i'm going slow roll over here.

Mostly inexperience. I've never used chips before, but I knew how to use an Arduino.

Honestly using the ADC chip is probably both cheaper, faster, and more safe, but inexperienced me knew that both of these parts worked well.

I also had the Arduino laying around.

 

[MaximumEd]

Wow! Just stumbled on this from the link in your sig. That is an excellent piece of work from one Fallout fan to another!!!