Nasa Style Circadian Lighting – The Wrap Up #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi
Here’s the wrap up of this Raspberry Pi version of very expensive NASA Style circadian lighting — featuring our Flat Digital RGB LED Pixel strands at Rasathus’ Raspberry Ramblings:
Well, it took a little longer than I had hoped; and took a couple more re-writes than I would have liked before I was happy with it. But its finally here.
For those of you that didn’t manage to catch the first part of this article, including the building of the hardware; it can be found over here…
But picking up where we left off. As a bit of a fan of minimalist white rooms, I’ve always loved the Phillips Living Colours system, as a way of applying a mood to a room. So from the moment I bought a set of Adafruit RGB Leds several months back, I always had the intention of putting them to use in this way.
Having always been interested in the process and psychology of sleep, and anything capable of making its way into space; the article by the BBC discussing Nasa’s commissioning of a new lighting system for the ISS had piqued my interest. So here we go, back to our attempt to replace incredibly expensive space hardware with cheap off the shelf components; although I’m sure Nasa’s approach would be somewhat more subtle….
12mm Diffused Flat Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801: RGB Pixels are digitally-controllable lights you can set to any color, or animate. Each RGB LED and controller chip is molded into a ‘dot’ of silicone. The dots are weatherproof and rugged. There are four flanges molded in so that you can ‘push’ them into a 12mm drill hole in any material up to 1.5mm/0.06″ thick. They’re typically used to make outdoor signs. These pixels have a flat square back, we also have pixels that are long and thin, both are the same electronics, just different shapes! (read more)
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EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
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