I’ve been wanting to build this for a log time, and I finally did it! And as a bonus, I won the 2022 Hackaday Sci-Fi Contest Winner! You can read all about it in my Star Trek Shuttle Console Hackaday project page. FAIR WARNING: it contains several SPOILERS to any of you that may want to play it someday.
COVID-19 has forced many of us to work from and practice social distancing to flatten the curve. As a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time in my home office. Since I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future, I decided it was time to clean and organize my office. When I clean/organize I end up digging up a bunch of stuff I haven’t used in years. Most of these items usually get recycled or donated, and some sometimes I’ll find small treasures that I’ve held on to but forgot about.
This time I found my Dad’s original office stoplight that he used when I was a kid in one of the random-stuff boxes. Essentially, it’s miniature stoplight that was used to indicate my Dad’s availability at any given moment. It was made with incandescent light fixtures with colored light covers. The light were controlled by two toggle switches.
Since my kids are home from school too, for the same reason I’m working from home, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to give this stoplight box new life. Hopefully it will help the kids understand when I’m in the middle of something and can’t be bothered.
While I could have made this from scratch that would have a much smaller profile, I wanted to keep the original look. I did replace the 6V incandescent light bulbs with colored LED’s. This was simple enough to do by cutting the light bulb fixture in half on the bandsaw. Then it was as simple as wiring up the LED’s and programming an ESP8266 thing with a very simple web interface.
/*
* Simple web LED control for a stop light.
* The server IP address of the ESP8266 module, will be printed to Serial when the module is connected.
*/
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <WiFiClient.h>
#include <ESP8266WebServer.h>
//////////////////////
// WiFi Definitions //
//////////////////////
const char *ssid = "your_wifi";
const char *password = "your_password";
const char *hostname = "office-stop-light";
const String title = "OFFICE STOP LIGHT CONTROL";
/////////////////////
// Pin Definitions //
/////////////////////
const int RED_LED_PIN = 4;
const int YEL_LED_PIN = 0;
const int GRN_LED_PIN = 5; // Thing's onboard, green LED
// Create an instance of the server
// specify the port to listen on as an argument
ESP8266WebServer server(80);
/* Homepage Webcode */
void send_homepage() {
String server_index = "<!DOCTYPE html><html lang=\"en\"><head><meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=no\"/><title>"+title+"</title>";
server_index += "<style>.c{text-align: center;} div,input{padding:5px;font-size:1em;} input{width:90%;} body{text-align: center;font-family:verdana;} button{border:0;border-radius:0.6rem;background-color:#1fb3ec;color:#fdd;line-height:2.4rem;font-size:1.2rem;width:100%;} .q{float: right;width: 64px;text-align: right;} .button_blue {background-color: #008CBA;} .button_red {background-color: #f44336;} .button_yellow {background-color: #ffdd00; color: black;} .button_dark_grey {background-color: #555555;} .button_green {background-color: #4CAF50;} </style>";
server_index += "<script>function c(l){document.getElementById('s').value=l.innerText||l.textContent;document.getElementById('p').focus();}</script>";
server_index += "</head><body><div style='text-align:left;display:inline-block;min-width:260px;'>";
server_index += "<H3>"+title+"</H3>";
server_index += "<form action=\"/cmd_red_on\" method=\"get\"><button class=\"button_red\">Red</button></form><br/><form action=\"/cmd_yellow_on\" method=\"get\"><button class=\"button_yellow\">Yellow</button></form><br/> <form action=\"/cmd_green_on\" method=\"get\"><button class=\"button_green\">Green</button></form><br/><form action=\"/cmd_all_off\" method=\"get\"><button class=\"button_dark_grey\">Off</button></form><br/> ";
server.send(200, "text/html", server_index);
}
/* Go to http://office-stop-light in a web browser with a device on the same network as this ESP8266 thing. */
void handleRoot() {
send_homepage();
}
void cmd_red_on() {
send_homepage();
digitalWrite(RED_LED_PIN, 1);
digitalWrite(YEL_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(GRN_LED_PIN, 0);
}
void cmd_yellow_on() {
send_homepage();
digitalWrite(RED_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(YEL_LED_PIN, 1);
digitalWrite(GRN_LED_PIN, 0);
}
void cmd_green_on() {
send_homepage();
digitalWrite(RED_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(YEL_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(GRN_LED_PIN, 1);
}
void cmd_all_off() {
send_homepage();
digitalWrite(RED_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(YEL_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(GRN_LED_PIN, 0);
}
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
delay(10);
// prepare GPIO / LED
pinMode(RED_LED_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(YEL_LED_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(GRN_LED_PIN, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(RED_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(YEL_LED_PIN, 0);
digitalWrite(GRN_LED_PIN, 0);
// Connect to WiFi network
Serial.println();
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(ssid);
WiFi.hostname(hostname);
WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println("");
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
// Configure and start the server
server.on("/", handleRoot);
server.on("/cmd_red_on", cmd_red_on);
server.on("/cmd_yellow_on", cmd_yellow_on);
server.on("/cmd_green_on", cmd_green_on);
server.on("/cmd_all_off", cmd_all_off);
//get heap status, analog input value and all GPIO statuses in one json call
server.on("/all.json", HTTP_GET, []() {
String json = "{";
json += "\"heap\":" + String(ESP.getFreeHeap());
json += ", \"analog\":" + String(analogRead(A0));
json += ", \"gpio\":" + String((uint32_t)(((GPI | GPO) & 0xFFFF) | ((GP16I & 0x01) << 16)));
json += "}";
server.send(200, "text/json", json);
json = String();
});
server.begin();
Serial.println("Server started");
// Print the IP address
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}
void loop() {
server.handleClient();
}
When we first got chickens, we were trying all kinds of things we read online to get the most out of our laying hens. This project was one of those silly ideas to try and provide more “daylight” for the chickens year round, so they would lay eggs year round.
I threw this together on a weekend. With these basic features in mind:
I used the following parts to make it happen (mostly because I already had them available):
I’m not going to go into a detailed step by step process on how I put this together, but hopefully between the pictures and description you can get the idea.
I followed these general steps to assemble the hardware:
Arduino sketch and Blynk app source: https://github.com/RubenFixit/smart_light_sf_blynk
It is nearing Christmas time again.
Last year, I was in an apartment that was doing a Christmas Light Decoration Competition. The first three winner received a discount on the next months rent.
So I decided to order some RGB LED strips from banggood.com and make some really cool IR controllable stars.
The process was simple, if not a bit tedious…
First, I measured the length of the smallest section I could get from the LED strop. Then I made a pattern, on a regular sheet of paper, that would give me the angles and length for each point in the star.
Then, I traced the angles on a piece of cardboard, cut the star out, and placed the sections of LED strips, to make sure everything fit.
Here is a picture of the star, the template, the tools I used, and the LED strips in place.
Now all that is left is to solder all the LED segments together.
This was by far the most tedious part.
And here it is all lit up.
And, why only make one when I can make three!
So Here is our final apartment balcony.
This was a costume prop my brother and I made for our nephew Carter.
Nothing special, just soldered a ring of white LED lights into a transparent 3D printed ring, and powered it all with a couple coin cells. Somehow we missed an LED and couldn’t get it working. And since we welded the LEDs between the ABS printed parts. We would have to destroy it and start over to try and fix it.
I wish I had taken more pictures early during the build.
Nothing much to this costume. I just cut up a black fleece blanket into the general shape of toothless wings. Then used a sowing machine to sow the ridges.
I was very lazy with the lights. I hot-glued some RGB LED strips to the wings, one on each side of the center ridge. Then wired the blue lights to a 9V battery plug. Then hot glued a Velcro cable tie to the back side of the wings to hold the 9V battery.
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