todbot blog » blinkm

Invisible Accent Light with BlinkM MaxM & FreeM

todbot — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:22:53 +0000

Sometimes you just want a little extra light in a room. With RGB LED tape, you can put light anywhere. But controlling its brightness and making it the color you want is a bit harder. A BlinkM MaxM can easily control LED tape, either as a stand-alone device, with an Arduino, or your computer via a LinkM. Stand-alone mode is great if you want a specific color or color pattern (the BlinkMSequencer makes this really easy) For this installation, I added a FreeM to the MaxM to let you control the light with a standard [...]

BlinkM Cylon mkII

todbot — Mon, 30 May 2011 06:32:04 +0000

For Maker Faire this year I made a second version of my BlinkM Cylon: BlinkM Cylon mkII. This is not a very cost-effective way of getting a Cylon effect. It however is a good way of showing how to wire up multiple BlinkMs with a long cable, using our new WireM cabling kit for BlinkM. And unlike normal Cylon circuits, this has full RGB color effects and gradual fading.

Here’s a quick video showing it in action.

BlinkM Cylon mkII consists of: - 13 BlinkMs (one for each of the tribes of Kobol) - one WireM cabling kit for BlinkM, consisting [...]

BlinkM Smart LED as the Smallest Arduino

todbot — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:17:29 +0000

Did you know you can run Arduino programs on tiny BlinkM Smart LEDs? It might make BlinkM the smallest Arduino so far. To use a BlinkM as an Arduino, all you need is the free Arduino software, a low-cost AVR programmer, some wire, and a BlinkM.

Here’s a quick video showing how it all works.

BlinkM Capabilities as an Arduino

The BlinkM board doesn’t have nearly the I/O pins and other features of a real Arduino board. But it is very tiny. Here are its capabilities: - 0.4″ square (MinM), or 0.6″ square (BlinkM) - 8MHz clock speed - [...]

Using FreeM with BlinkM MaxM

todbot — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:13:33 +0000

While FreeM is mostly designed to work with BlinkMs and MinMs, it can be made to work with MaxMs. FreeM cannot supply the power that MaxMs need (250mA and FreeM can only supply up to 100mA), but there are other ways. One way to do it is to power the FreeM from the MaxM’s built-in 5V power supply.

To do this, get a MaxM, a FreeM, a small scrap of wire, and a 12VDC power supply.

Remove the “pwrsel” jumper and wrap the small piece of wire around all three pins of the “pwrsel” jumper. Then plug the [...]

BlinkM Battery Pack HowTo

todbot — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:41:20 +0000

Make a long-lasting, rechargeable battery pack for your BlinkM MaxM, BlinkM, or BlinkM MinM using just pliers, no soldering!

BlinkMs are perfect for portable, stand-alone uses. There are many ways to hook a BlinkM to battery sources. Here’s one way that works for all BlinkMs.

BlinkM Battery Pack: Step 1: Get all the parts together

Parts are:

- BlinkM MaxM, BlinkM, or BlinkM MinM

- 4xAA battery holder with switch, like this Jameco one or Mouser one

- 4xAA NiMH batteries (not alkaline!)

- 2×8 IDC crimp connector (FCI 71600-308LF), from Digikey 609-3570-ND or Mouser 649-71600-308LF

Tools you’ll need: - pliers with wide jaws to crimp - cutters [...]

ReflashBlinkM: Update your BlinkM’s firmware

todbot — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:32:45 +0000

All BlinkM-family devices can have their firmware updated. This makes them great for tiny development boards for ATtiny processors. ReflashBlinkM is an application that makes it easy to put back the original firmware or update a BlinkM to the latest firmware.

Previously you needed an AVR ISP programmer like the AVRISPmkII or the USBtinyISP. Thanks to the ArduinoISP sketch that ships with Arduino, if you have already have an Arduino, you can easily reflash your BlinkM with new firmware.

The ReflashBlinkM application is a tool for Mac OS X and Windows that uses ArduinoISP to help you reflash BlinkMs to their default [...]

SoftI2CMaster: Add I2C to any Arduino pins

todbot — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 07:14:01 +0000

Ever wanted to use any pair of pins for I2C on Arduino, not just the dedicated pins on Analog 4 & 5? Me too, so I made a quick little Arduino library called “SoftI2CMaster”, available in the “blinkm-projects” Googlecode repository.

Get it here: SoftI2CMaster.h, SoftI2CMaster.cpp.

It’s still a work in progress, but it can write data pretty successfully and do it over longer cables than normal.

For the VIMBY/Scion Hackerspace Challenge, I created an array of BlinkM MaxM-powered accent lights for the device we made. Because the I2C cable was longer than a few feet, the normal Wire library that [...]

Hacking USB HID for Easy Tethered Ubicomp

todbot — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:31:04 +0000

At this years Sketching in Hardware conference, I gave a talk on the general approach I used to create LinkM, ThingM’s USB-to-I2C adapter for programming and controlling BlinkMs. I called it “Hacking USB HID for Easy Tethered Ubicomp” (4.8MB PDF) to give it a form that fit within some of the larger issues I’ve been dealing with in creating easily usable ubiquitous computing devices.

USB has many different (and confusing) aspects to it. I’ve long advocated the creation of a set of libraries and patterns to make “driverless” USB a reality. A sort of training wheels for USB. [...]

ThingM at Maker Faire 2010

todbot — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:51:08 +0000

My company ThingM had an official presence at Maker Faire this year. We were showing off the BlinkM line, including the new BlinkM MinM and the LinkM USB BlinkM controller. It was a lot of fun. And packed!

(click any photo to go to larger version on Flickr)

We were in the Maker Shed building, right underneath the Arduino banner, so we got lots of awesome questions about Arduino. The most common: “So I just picked up this thing that says ‘works with Arduino’…well, what *is* Arduino?” It was so great to see so many people interested [...]

Momentary Button as On/Off Toggle using 555

todbot — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:29:15 +0000

(as a few had noticed, I had an error in the schematic shown. It’s been updated, thanks!)

A recent question from a friend who made a really cool BlinkM hoodie was: How can you turn a momentary button press into an on/off toggle?

There are tons of ways to do this if you like getting into electronics. Most all work off of some flip-flop like principle. And while I could have suggested a true flip-flop chip, I thought it would be cooler if you could use a 555 timer chip (which contains a single flip-flop and a couple [...]

I2CScanner.pde: Arduino as I2C bus scanner

todbot — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:28:31 +0000

One of the challenges of working with I2C (aka “two-wire” or “TWI” or “Wire”) devices is knowing the I2C address of the device. Older devices have a fixed address, or a “choose one-of-four” approach. But newer I2C devices have fully programmable addresses, leading to cases of not knowing what address a device is at.

Fortunately, there’s a technique one can use to “scan” an I2C bus and determine these addresses. Conceptually it’s very similar to a network “ping”. Below is an Arduino sketch “I2CScanner.pde” that turns an Arduino into an I2C bus scanner.

- I2CScanner.pde — Turn Arduino into [...]

Scary Shifty Servo Eyeballs

todbot — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:18:42 +0000

If you want a slightly different look for your Halloween pumpkin or skull, you can pretty quickly whip something up with a few servos and an Arduino. Here’s a set of Scary Shifty Servo Eyeballs, for instance: It looks around randomly…what’s over there!… wait, what’s that!

As you can probably tell it’s a pretty simple arrangement (click for bigger):

Building It

It consists of the following components: - 2 toy eyeballs or ping pong balls painted like eyeballs - 2 small servos (HXT500 from HobbyKing.com or similar) - 1 standard servo - 1 Arduino with tiny breadboard rubber-banded on top - 2 BlinkMs, one for each [...]

Behold the Crystal Monster

todbot — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:13:38 +0000

The Crystal Monster is an art piece created by Beverly Tang and Tod E. Kurt (me). It’s on display in the Continental Gallery on 4th & Spring St in downtown Los Angeles. The shape and structure of the Crystal Monster are Beverly’s design. I created the lighting and the electronics. It’s made from over 400 sheets of laser-cut acrylic, more that 240 feet of LED tape (>2200 RGB LEDs!), and around 500 steel rods and other steel hardware. It’s approximately 12 feet long and 10 feet wide and hovers 10 feet above your head. It’s [...]

Using MaxM with flexible RGB tape

todbot — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:41:30 +0000

A single BlinkM MaxM can easily drive a 5 meter (16 ft) roll of the flexible RGB SMD LED tape that’s used for architectural lighting. Each roll contains 150 RGB LEDs.

Each LED in the tape is a SMD RGB "5050" LED, capable of putting out about 6000mcd. The spacing between LEDs is 3.3cm (~1.25").

Every 3 LEDs is a cut mark with solder tabs so you can cut or join pieces of tape.

Max current for a 5m roll is about 1.9 Amps. I did a quick test of MaxM driving three rolls at about 6A and [...]

Multiple BlinkM MaxM Blasters on one Master

todbot — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:50:17 +0000

BlinkM MaxMs will be back in stock soon. Over on our GetSatisfaction area, there’s a question on how to use multiple BlinkM MaxM “Blaster” LED boards with one MaxM “Master” driver board. It’s possible and only just a little tricky. The Blaster board is powered by the 5V voltage regulator built-in to the Master board. That regulator is designed to power just one Master and one Blaster. If you try to drive multiple Blasters with it, it might work, but we don’t recommended it and could blow up your Master board.

Instead, it’s better to drive [...]