Mark Briggs shared an update of his ColorRing project on the Adafruit Forums. Check out links to the tutorial on his site where he shares about adding an Adafruit CC3000 shield into the mix to allow visitors to change the colors in real time.
I’ve finally gotten my project in a state where I think it can be shared, and I created a tutorial (with video demos, pictures, and a “how-to”):
- Tutorial: http://briggs-inc.com/blog/colorring/
- ColorRing Library: https://github.com/briggsm/colorring
- ColorRing CC Library: https://github.com/briggsm/colorringcc
In a nutshell, it’s 2 strips of 60 RGB (individually addressable) LED’s each, in a circle – 1 facing inwards, the other (more densely populated) facing outwards. The strips are controlled serially (SPI) via an Arduino Mega 2560 board. The code I wrote for the microprocessor makes the LED’s dance (animaed) in all kinds of fun colors & patterns.
But to add 1 more layer of fun & creativity, I added a Adafruit CC3000 WiFi Shield to the Arduino board. And added some code to listen for input from abroad (Wi-Fi). Now, one can open a browser on their tablet, smartphone, laptop, etc, and change the strips’ colors and patterns in real time! (How fun is that?!)
The code contains some “building blocks”, to try to help you create any kind of colors and patters and animations you want. So you can build your “light show” in your browser, and immediately see what it looks like on the ColorRing!
Featured Adafruit Product!
Adafruit CC3000 WiFi Breakout with Onboard Ceramic Antenna: The CC3000 hits that sweet spot of usability, price and capability. It uses SPI for communication (not UART!) so you can push data as fast as you want or as slow as you want. It has a proper interrupt system with IRQ pin so you can have asynchronous connections. It supports 802.11b/g, open/WEP/WPA/WPA2 security, TKIP & AES. A built in TCP/IP stack with a “BSD socket” interface. TCP and UDP in both client and server mode, up to 4 concurrent sockets. It does not support “AP” mode, it can connect to an access point but it cannot be an access point.
We wrapped this little silver modules in a tidy breakout board. It has an onboard 3.3V regulator that can handle the 350mA peak current, and a level shifter to allow 3 or 5V logic level. The antenna layout is identical to TI’s suggested layout and we’re using the same components, trace arrangement, and antenna so the board maintains its FCC emitter compliance (you’ll still need to perform FCC validation for a finished product, but the WiFi part is taken care of). Even though it’s got an onboard antenna we were pretty surprised at the range, as good as a smartphone’s. (read more)
