LED Matrix Pendant

I made a pendant for my girlfriend as a Halloween present. The animation was changed to an eye that blinks and looks around. I really wanted it not to just loop the same animation so I set out to create a few animations for the pendant to cycle through at random including a few longer blackout periods. I am still rather new to the coding side of this and didn’t understand some of the code, but here is the version I have working as of now. Continue reading LED Matrix Pendant

Basic Robot design.

These are the electronic components necessary to build a basic robot for children that uses two vibration motors to move forward, left, and right. Two digital pins are used to control the vibration motors leaving 3 open GPIO pins. The Photo cell and LED can be used to detect the presence, and close proximity, of another robot. The Micro servo is an optional add on so that a simple claw (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18339) can be added. Continue reading Basic Robot design.

I2C protocol for LED matrix

Wow this will come in handy when I get around to configuring the Imp to send I2C commands to the Adafruit 8×8 LED matrix backpack. Hopefully I can map the LED addresses easily so I can make an icon library to drive the matrix. Continue reading I2C protocol for LED matrix

Electric Imp project.

I am working on using the Electric Imp I got from Adafruit to make a WiFi enabled Emoticon avatar. Basically it will receive code from a website and display the icon for that code on a small 8×8 LED matrix accompanied by a notification sound. This will also provide feedback through a button on the avatar to acknowledge the emoticon, and a motion detector to tell when someone is near the avatar.

Continue reading Electric Imp project.

i2c bus error with LED marix on RasPi

This is mostly for myself but I figured I would post it here as well. After putting together and setting up my new 8×8 bi-color LED matrix and i2c control PCB from Adafruit, I got a script error saying “Error accessing 0x70: Check your I2C address”. When I run sudo i2cdetect -y 0, I get nothing, but the matrix is detected when I run sudo i2cdetect -y 1.

Continue reading i2c bus error with LED marix on RasPi