Tag Archives: blinkm

Happy New Year!

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Following Dan Power and Crysta Anderson’s lead, I’m going to kick off the new year with a look back at the most popular posts from 2010. So with barely a pause and not even a drum roll, the winners are…

1. My second CurrentCost development board circuit

Way out ahead at number one is the only circuit board I’ve completed and put to regular use. Still working fine, apart from a brief pause when the batteries ran out. Kind of regretting replacing the batteries just in time for the recent spell of cold weather!

2. Master Information Hub: Getting Started

Not a close second, but still respectably ahead of the pack, this post is one I regularly point people to the first time they use the MDM Workbench. Hopefully it’s helped a few people out this year.

3. New clock radio

Leading the pack is this surprise entry to the top ten. Unlike some Joggler owners, I still use it fairly regularly and, apart from the occasional experiment, I’m still using the O2 software it came with. I did give Jolicloud another go yesterday, to see whether a little bluetooth keyboard helps; nice, but just not quite fast enough to switch permanently. Might give MeeGo a try next.

4. Get off my hashtag

Had a really interesting chat at the last homecamp about tagging, so this is a subject I’m likely to return to this year.

5. Weather Underground + Mashup Hub + Pachube = orb food

Maybe it’s just me but I get quite excited about the potential that this kind of data mashup has. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen what you can do with enterprise data and software like Message Broker; now imagine the possibilities with open data and simple ways for anyone to manipulate it. (That’s not manipulation in the political sense of course!)

6. Master Information Hub: Social Bookmark Services

This follows on from the number 2 post, while the third in the series has some catching up to do and didn’t make the top 10. I also have some has some catching up to do; I hope to get to the next instalment early this year.

7. Liberal Democrats can’t win here

Politicians, gotta love ’em. I wonder how these graphs will look if we get proportional representation for the next election.

8. Home Easy ambient orb

All soldered together but not yet receiving that lovely data from the number 5 post. I’m currently pondering whether to just hard code things ‘for now’ or hack some more so that the three orbs could be programmed using the BlinkM sequencer.

9. Digital House Arrest

Politicians again. Really. Very. Annoying. I never did get a reply to my last letter to my MP, Chris Huhne.

10. Manifesto

Given that all politicians seem to be as bad as each other I was half tempted to stand as a RON (reopen nominations) candidate Anyone else up for a For The Win party next time?!

Highly commended: It takes two

Not actually in the top ten but this post about Hedge End twinning deserves an honourable mention for the great comments about Frome’s twins.

Happy new year!

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B&Q ambient orb kit

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It’s not quite the sort of do it yourself which B&Q is traditionally known for but ‘Lights by B&Q‘ is looking like a perfect ambient orb kit. I almost managed to resist getting one while buying paint for the bathroom, but it just looked too tempting…

ambient-lamp

Getting inside was easy, with just a few screws holding the back in place. Once in, there’s a simple string of little circuit boards glued to plastic balls. A bit of levering popped the first one off to reveal a set of three LEDs, and it looks like they’re soldered on in a common anode arrangement…

inside-disco-light

You could just ditch the RGB circuits completely and pop in a few blinkms but I’d like to reuse what’s already in B&Q’s handy kit. I think it should be possible to cut the tracks to the colour changing circuit and wire the LEDs up to an Arduino instead. The problem is that there aren’t enough PWM outputs on a single Arduino to drive three RGB orbs. Fortunately a combination of a TLC5940 LED driver chip, and the Arduino library to go with it, should solve that problem.

Here are a few other links which look like they could be useful for this little  project:

If I get the simple version working, I’d eventually like to get it working wirelessly. It would be much more useful if the orbs could be plugged in anywhere in the house rather than being connected to my home server via USB the whole time.

Update: not to be outdone, it looks like Homebase have a selection of (far cheaper) ambient orb kits as well now! (23 August 2010)