The final project we worked on for Tangible Interaction was a redesign and production of a large number of their Zygote interactive LED globe concept. The globes are about six feet across, translucent, filled with helium, and contain LEDs that light the sphere in different colors as they slowly bounce across a crowd.

Tangible Interaction has built these before, but they wanted to build a new design from scratch and add several important features. They contacted macetech to work on the design and production of the new Zygote cores.

This ended up being a very intense project. We had a solid idea how to proceed at the beginning of the project, but due to worldwide semiconductor shortages, necessary parts were dropping out of stock as fast as they were specified. Every time a part became unavailable, it caused a cascade of design changes that required changing other components, which then became unavailable...and so on. Some parts of the project were completely redesigned several times.

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When a city hosts the Olypmics, it's always a reason for that city to put their best foot forward. You'll see amazing architecture and artwork that didn't exist a few years earlier. In recent years both architecture and artwork have been including more light and interactive elements. LED lighting is both efficient and easily controlled to produce a range of color and animation effects.

This year we were fortunate to play some part in a number of LED installations at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. In some cases we provided existing macetech products, and in others we developed and produced custom hardware. All the projects were developed and implemented by Tangible Interaction, located in Vancouver, Canada.

Vancouver Public Library - Seed of Truce

Visit Tangible Interaction's Seed of Truce page

This was a completely custom project that had a very short leadtime. Alex Beim from Tangible Interaction contacted us about the project idea, and in less than a week they were in production (while working on other projects for Alex and holding down our day jobs). Alex needed a device that would light up an LED with a specific blinking/fading pattern, and also save enough power to run for about two weeks. He needed at least 5,000 of these devices, so the cost also needed to be minimal. Another concern was light weight.

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Introduction

Waaaaaay back in 2009, we took a coffee/side table from IKEA and wired it with 81 ShiftBrite RGB modules in a 9x9 grid. We took it to Maker Faire Bay Area 2009 and showed it off to thousands of people. However, we never managed to put together some detailed documentation, beyond a few photos.

Well, we've decided to revisit the project and show a bit more of how the table is constructed, and maybe give you a few ideas for your own LED table project. Additionally, we've added macetech's new Bluetooth shield functionality and hooked it up to Twitter! By correctly formatting your tweet and including the #ledtable hashtag, you can help create an ever-changing work of art in our living room.

Control the Table

Simply post a tweet including the hashtag #ledtable and use the following pixel definition format:

#ledtable 0,3,red; 1,2,green; 4,4,#FD2245;

In other words, the first two numbers are x and y coordinates (0 through 8 allowed) and then the pixel color. You can specify a color in HTML format or just use a named color from the below:

• black
• red
• green
• blue
• yellow
• cyan
• magenta
• gray
• white

The numerical and color values must be separated by commas, and each pixel definition must be ended with a semicolon. The #ledtable hashtag can be anywhere in the tweet, and you can define as many pixels as will fit in the tweet. Whitespace and additional text is not a problem.

Update

We've just got word that some fans helped set up a tweet generator application for the LED table. Check it out here!

Thanks to chicklets921 for creating the generator and MikeCyberMe for setting up the hosting. There have been some really cool pictures drawn on the table, but this should help make it a lot easier. Thanks!

Live Stream

You can watch the results live on UStream below (if we have the table running at the moment). Unless you want to go to Ustream's page, just click on the little ">" arrow in the lower left corner instead of the big one in the middle of the video.

Online TV Shows by Ustream

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Download: ArduinoShieldScaffold.zip

Last year I made a pair of simple Eagle CAD files that contained headers and board outlines for an Arduino shield. The idea was that you could create a new project, copy the scaffold .sch and .brd files into it, then rename them and begin designing your new shield project. There are several part libraries out there with Arduino layouts, but in order to change the board outline, text, or add/remove holes, you'd have to go into the library and edit the part. And you'd actually need to make a new part, because if you ever open a different project and update the libraries, your edited part would overwrite whatever you had before.

Anyway, I updated the Shield Scaffold to be a little more useful. The TallParts layer contains outlines of the USB connector, power connector, and ISP header. You want to avoid any pins or exposed copper in this area, otherwise you may have an accidental short. The ArduinoHoles layer contains the original hole locations and diameters on the Arduino, in case you want to duplicate those holes to mount the shield securely with screws.

When you're ready to generate Gerber files, just make sure the TallParts and ArduinoHoles layers aren't selected in any of the CAM layers.

This is a great new project that just went live in the FSM Café on the University of California Berkeley campus. It's a floor-to-ceiling energy meter that displays a colorful stacked bar chart of power being used by various appliances within the cafe. It contains over 100 93 ShiftBrite RGB LED modules controlled by an Arduino.

Here's a video of the power meter in operation:
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Right now (the time of this article) we're the only place you can buy these modules in small quantities and without an 18 to 22 week leadtime.

We currently have a surplus of TLC5947DAP chips, purchased for a series of upcoming new products. Due to worldwide semiconductor shortages, this particular chip has been nearly impossible to buy for more than half a year. We finally saw a roll of 2,000 appear on Arrow's website, and it could only be sold as a complete reel. Since there was really no other way to get the quantity we needed, we decided to buy the whole reel and then make half of it available as a service to the general (electronics hobbyist) public.

The TLC5947DAP (datasheet) is a powerful LED controller chip from Texas Instruments. It has 24 channels of individually-settable 12-bit PWM, each switching a current-controlled sink driver. The maximum current is set by a single external resistor for the whole chip. This makes the chip perfect for driving 24 LEDs with precise brightness control; ideal for controlling 8 RGB LEDs. The current sinks eliminate the need for external resistors for each LED, with correct supply voltage and heatsinking.

Check it out in our store: TLC5947

A quick heads up...for everyone who was disappointed by the huge traffic at SparkFun day, we're running a 10% discount in the macetech.com store to make you feel a little better. Just place an order and type in the coupon code FREEDAY and you'll get 10% off.

The code is valid today and tomorrow only!

It's been a while since my last post...we've been really busy with some projects the past few months. However, on New Year's Eve I took a couple hours to build a miniature version of the Times Square ball. I did something similar last year, with 32 ShiftBrites and a geometric drinking straw construction. This year I used a lot of plastic cups glued into a sphere, and six Satellite Modules controlled by ShiftBars and an Arduino.

There are some more photos and a video available on the 2010 New Year's ball Flickr set.

Jason was talking to one of our distributors recently (Paul at Pololu.com). He mentioned that he wasn't going to be at home this year to try putting some ShiftBrites in pumpkins. That sounded like such a good idea, we decided to run with it!

We had a bunch of high brightness LED arrays left over from a recent project, and decided to use those to replace the candles in some pumpkins. Each array has 10 five-chip 100mA LEDs: four red, three green, and three blue. The extra red LED was added because they tend to be a little dimmer than the blue and green LEDs. Since the ShiftBar can't control more than 150mA per channel, the LEDs are arranged in series for a higher forward voltage, to approach 4.5W total. The light output is about the same as 15 ShiftBrites, with 5 extra ShiftBrites thrown in for the red channel.

Naturally, we had to start with some pumpkins. I got eight of them from Safeway and set them up in the back yard. Our friends Ethan and Karly were coming over for a barbecue, so we added pumpkin carving to the list of activities. They were happy to help carve pumpkins...and also brought food and grilled it for us! The bison burgers were delicious. The pumpkin carving went as usual...disgusting pumpkin guts clinging to everything, etc.

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We've been selling the ChronoDot for a while over in the macetech store. It's a very accurate realtime clock module with integrated battery, based on the DS3231. It will maintain time within a minute per year, in varying temperatures. Instead of using an external source (GPS, WWVB, internet), it measures the temperature of the internal crystal and switches a bank of capacitors to pull the frequency back to 32KHz.

Our original stock of 100 pieces was getting low, so we decided to order 200 more. However, there were some staff changes at our pcb manufacturer and assembler, and they didn't get the memo that we wanted the header pins soldered on the bottom of the device. I can sort of understand, since the silkscreen does appear on the top of the PCB...but they did make 100 correctly before.
In any case, we got stuck with 200 less-than-ideal modules. You can still put them on a breadboard, but you can't see the handy signal names. Other than that, they work just the same as the original ChronoDot.

We tried to think up a few possible solutions. Desoldering and resoldering the headers would be the obvious solution, but we didn't like the idea of subjecting all the parts to another process. Desoldering can be pretty damaging to a PCB and components.

We tried to use them as snacks during one of our friend Karly's photoshoots, but even though the ChronoDOH is lead-free, model reviews were poor. Some thought it was "too crunchy" and others were concerned that it had "too many calories."

So in the end, it looked like we were stuck with 200 of these unless we could unload them somehow. We decided to drastically cut the price, and give a chance for anyone willing to use a soldering iron to get a really good deal! The ChronoDOH is $7.99 instead of $14.99 for the original ChronoDot.

It's not always going to be this cheap...we just want to get rid of these and have more ChronoDots built with the correct header configuration. And we'll sell those at the original price...we're running a business. So if you want to get a great deal on an extremely accurate RTC module, time is running out. They are selling steadily so far.

Now, keep in mind that if you just want to buy a chip from Digikey, it costs $7.42 plus shipping unless you buy 25 or more, and only comes in surface mount. For a few cents more, the ChronoDOH gives you a PCB with the surface mount chip already soldered, and a lithium battery good for years of timekeeping. It'll work with DS1307 code, which already exists for pretty much any microcontroller out there.

Basically, it's an incredible deal...if you have a project that involves timekeeping, get one now!