todbot blog » thingm

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 [...]

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 [...]

Wiichuck Adapter on TV!

todbot — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:47:07 +0000

Woohoo, my little Wiichuck adpter for experimenting with the Wii nuchuck made it on TV, thanks to my buddy John Park and Make: TV.

See the Makezine blog post with the segment, or watch it here:

Maker Workshop – Personal Flight Recorder on Make: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Get on the BlinkM Bus with a BlinkM Cylon

todbot — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:43:02 +0000

BlinkMs are a lot of fun by themselves, but they’re also little network devices, each having its own address on an I2C network. Here’s where I think BlinkM can really shine since it makes controlling multiple RGB LEDs pretty easy. For Maker Faire, I wanted to show off this facet by having a single Arduino control a dozen or so BlinkMs on a single I2C bus. The result is shown in the little video below.

Read on for how this was put together.

Overall Design

Controlling several RGB LEDs is no small task, BlinkM makes it easier and I wanted [...]

ThingM & BlinkM at Maker Faire!

todbot — Sat, 03 May 2008 01:25:49 +0000

ThingM (Mike and me and some friends) will be at Maker Faire Bay Area 2008 this weekend. Come by and visit us!

Our bench will be about “Experiments with Smart LEDs”. Basically we’re showing off BlinkM, the projects that led up to BlinkM, like my experiments with Smart LEDs, some future products we’re working on, and some fun projects using these gizmos.

Here’s some photos of some of the projects as they were being built:

And lots of the projects will be using various types of Arduino, if you’re into that sort of thing.

“WiiChuck” Wii Nunchuck Adapter Available

todbot — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:41:17 +0000

Want to hook up a Wii Nunchuck to an Arduino but don’t want to cut up the cord on your Nunchuck? Yeah me too. So I made some of these:

It’s a small PCB that adapts the Wii Nunchuck connector to standard 4-pin header. I call it the “wiichuck adapter”. It plugs directly into the Arduino, no wiring necessary. You can get one too for $4.

Available from the following wonderful shops: - FunGizmos.com. FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING. International shipping for $1 more. - Tinker.it (UK) - Little Bird Electronics (Australia) - Sparkfun. Ships domestic & internationally. [...]

BlinkM for Obama on BoingBoing

todbot — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 05:27:22 +0000

Yay, BlinkM made it onto BoingBoing!

“Homemade Obama “hope beacon” with LED light thingies”

It’s a pity there isn’t a movie of the poster in action. I’d like to see how the light script they programmed into the BlinkMs looked.

BlinkM Hello, Video Guides, Example Code

todbot — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:54:04 +0000

This is a BlinkM: BlinkMs are “smart LEDs”, a type of smart interface component. A BlinkM consists of an ultrabirght RGB LED backed with a microcontroller with built-in knowledge about 24-bit color spaces, color fading, and color pattern generation. All in a package 0.6” wide. You talk to it over I2C, a serial protocol spoken by many different things. (Arduino speaks it, as do Basic Stamps, and your PC) And you can have over 100 BlinkMs on the same serial bus, each individually addressable. Here’s how they can hook up to an Arduino:

BlinkMs are available from SparkFun [...]

WineM lights, a BlinkM predecessor

todbot — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:12:25 +0000

With BlinkMs available for purchase soon, I figured it would be neat to show what a large collection of them can do. BlinkMs were created from my desire to have a “smart LED” that did its own tri-color PWM. I didn’t want to build a real-time system to control the PWM of several hundred RGB LEDs. And existing LED controllers didn’t meet my needs. I wanted something that knew a bit about color and color patterns and could be networked together into clusters. Thus BlinkM. A single BlinkM is fun, but the real utility is seen when [...]

Things at ThingM, my Berkeley INFO290-13 talk

todbot — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:03:48 +0000

On Nov 8th I was a guest lecturer at the “Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces” class at UC Berkeley. It’s a physical computing course, about “a new approach to HCI which focuses on the physical interaction with computational media.” The class has both lecture and lab components. The lab section is hands-on experimenting with novel physical interfaces, using Arduino as the core. So of course I have a great fondness for the course.

The talk itself was a sort of summary of the things we’ve been pondering at ThingM. If you’re already familiar with the [...]

WineM prototype at NextFest

todbot — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:16:14 +0000

WineM solves the problem of remembering all the information about the wines in a large wine rack, cellar or cabinet, or searching through that data. This smart wine rack makes that information always accessible and updatable.

ThingM will be at Wired’s NextFest conference, showing off a prototype of our WineM product. Come visit us if you’re in LA!

You can even read a press release about WineM.

WineM has a bank of RGB LEDs for every cell a bottle can go in. Each cell has a microcontroller implementing a high-power variant of a SmartLED. There are 576 total LEDs in the [...]

Smart Interface Components, my Sketching07 talk

todbot — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:24:23 +0000

The Sketching in Hardware 2 conference was a blast. So many interesting people and ideas. I wish we could have it every few months. Mike has his notes and a good summary of this year’s Sketching.

My talk was on “Smart Interface Components”. It was a generalization of the things I’ve been thinking about with the Smart LED prototypes.

Slides from the talk: sketching07-tod-smartcomponents.pdf

What are Smart Interface Components? Current interface components, the sensors and actuators that comprise the user interface of the gadgets we use, are dumb. They require specialized domain-specific knowledge to make work correctly, non-trivial [...]