DiyLightAnimation
Hardware => Other Projects => Topic started by: SleepyElec on January 13, 2009,
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Hi Everyone,
As I mentioned in my intro, I've recently decided to shift my home spun setup to a Lynx compatible / pin compatible design and I'm looking for some hardware projects that I can contribute. Obviously, most of the obvious needs have been met but I'd like to solicit ideas for additional hardware that could make things easier.
My first order of business will be to get a dongle design that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done. This might seem superfluous to some given we already have a dongle but the decoding of the serial stream from the computer and encoding of DMX are fairly important building blocks for doing pretty much everything else.
The next question is what else could we use.
Ideas that come to mind are tester type devices. A powered box that just turns everything on. Broadcasts all 0xFF or all 0x00 on all 512 channels. I definitely found myself wanting one for being able to turn all the lights on or off. Also nice for testing boxes one at a time. Comments? How does everyone else deal with this? A laptop running Vixen?
The next step would be to display the output through an LED matrix and also toggle individual lines. I know that someone has done the 8x8 LED matrix, I built one myself on perfboard and found it pretty useful, but people here didn't really seems to bite at it.
Another interesting problem people seem to encounter is getting the signal from a computer on the inside, to the display on the outside. Wireless which is already being worked obviously would address this. What do people think about just doing an LED/Laser Diode & Photodiode type design to go through a window.
There's a good possibility this could be an all in one device. For instance, having the photodiode on the same board as the LED matrix would actually be useful since we could have the matrix light up with the DMX feed which would help with aiming the LED/Laser Diode.
Are these things that people need and or want?
Ideas don't necessarily have to be broadly applicable. Just interesting enough for me to want to try it and if you're the only person who wants it, you can just have my proto.
-Allen :-)
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My LED test matrix is 256 channels with dimming. You can find it at http://diylightanimation.com/index.php?topic=375.0 (http://diylightanimation.com/index.php?topic=375.0).
I would be interested in a wireless solution that is DMX in and out myself.
/mike
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Hi Everyone,
My first order of business will be to get a dongle design that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done.
-Allen :-)
HUH??
I have no idea what you are talking about. The lynx dongle DOES use the Enttec DMX Pro plugin in Vixen to control dimmers.
Can you explain this to a non-engineer type that had lights blinking in December with the Enttec DMX pro plugin.
Also
RJ has already announce plans to release two types of wireless devices this year. One that works off of a wifi router and another version that has a wireless dongle transmitter and receivers that are either inside a lynx express or a plugin for the other boards (ssr4-dmx, FS)
Allen, there is nothing wrong with new ideas for hardware, I am just confused about redesigning hardware that is working fine (lynx dongle in this case).
Rick R.
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how about a dedicated one for megatrees. Looks like a lot of ppl do 48 channel mega trees. just a thought.
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My first order of business will be to get a dongle design that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done. This might seem superfluous to some given we already have a dongle but the decoding of the serial stream from the computer and encoding of DMX are fairly important building blocks for doing pretty much everything else.
I'm with Rick.......Don't we already have this?
As for Ideas............I think a small, battery powered device that could turn on a channel of your choice. Kind of along the lines of your tester idea. Where I see it being really useful, for example, when up on the roof hooking up lights to controllers, you could just turn on channel 173 (or whatever) to make sure you are hooking up the correct channel to the right string of lights. The way I did this this year was with a pocket pc using LogMeIn to control the Vixen computer. This worked ok, but after a while, I found it much easier to have my wife sit at the computer on the cell phone.
If it would be possible to add dimming to this device, it could also be used to set start channels on RJs controllers in the field easily. I am guessing I spent about 3 hours total this year walking into the house to set up vixen to program a start channel. Then walking back out, setting the channel, walking back in the house to test the channel I just set as the start address, walking back out to see if that channel was actually on............
Thanks for your willingness to contribute,
Kyle ;D ;D
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For testing, why not just throw the controller PC on a wireless network and remote desktop into the box while you are testing. You can disable the wireless interface when not testing.
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Re: Tester box:
I do like the idea of a 1 channel DMX "console" with maybe a single fader and bump button. Maybe a little LCD could read the current channel and intensity in %. Maybe you could fade the selected channel then scroll up or down to another and have it hold the channel you were on at the set intensity. Then I suppose a "blackout" or reset button and "all on" button? I don't know what it would take to code this... Just dreaming out loud I guess. ;D
Re: in a pinch heatsinks:
Buy a piece of .75"x.75" aluminum angle stock (Home Depot?) and mark and drill the holes then use machine screws/washers/nuts to attach. If fitment or accuracy of the holes became a problem either switch to smaller screws for the same holes or drill the holes bigger. This is similar to a lot of folk's SSRoz heatsinks that I have seen. I also thought about notching the non-drilled part to make fingers to add to the surface area.
Another possibility might be a single to-220 fingered heatsink for a particularly heavily loaded channel. ie:
http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/Aavid/Web%20Photos/577202B00000.jpg (http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/Aavid/Web%20Photos/577202B00000.jpg)
I have to respectfully disagree on the epoxy idea mostly because of the hindered repairability after epoxying the triac. The traces on these boards should withstand some rework as especially since the holes are thru-plated.
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I like the idea of the small dmx tester. I come from the theatrical world and there are several pro units made that are kinda expensive. A company call Fleenor designs has a unit called the "Gizmo". It allow to turn on one channel at a time and dimmup/down or turn on groups it is pretty cool. http://www.dfd.com/pdf/gizmdata.pdf Another manufacture is american dj they used to make a dmx tester but have discontinued it http://www.americandj.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ItemNumber=69&Category=Control_DISCONTINUED&txtSearch=dmx%20tester
So with this all said a small hand unit like these that we all can afford with rg45 dmx out would be great.
KEN
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If you really want something that will help - the DMX single channel Gizmo is a good idea, but I think lots of us using minilights still would like the light strand checker. its something you plug the light strand into, and it sends a current that causes burnt out bulbs to hum. Makes it easier to find and replace bad bulbs in strings that don't respond to the $20 lightcheckers. Someone posted a link to the commercial version in TidBits or the Porch, can't find it right now though or I would have attached the link.
Steve
Found it: make this thing
http://diylightanimation.com/index.php?topic=296.0 (http://diylightanimation.com/index.php?topic=296.0)
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Okay, I have a couple of ideas. However, I have yet to assemble my first board so take this with a grain of salt.
1. How about a handheld SSR4 start channel programmer? Seems like I recall someone posting about the amount of time spent running back and forth to the PC to do this?
2. A Lynx Blade System. Similar to a computer blade server, the main board is obviously a Freestyle with SSR boards that plug in using some sort of backplane or bus - all in one enclosure. It might even be able to do something like 8 channel full size SSR boards or 4 ch 'half-width' cards - autodetected by the host.
Ron
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Afford is the key point. That Gizmo product is $1,200! :o
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Allen,
Not to jump on the bandwagon here, but why would you want to re-invent the wheel?
Just because you can?
Sorry,.... 2 cents
EDIT - Sorry, should've been more specific, I see you've got several recommandations. This post was about dongle. Oops.
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How about an inexpensive (around $30-$40) handheld battery powered DMX analyzer that can also be used to set your start channel?
I have a past project that was a DMX analyzer with a 16X2 LCD (HD44780) display that I did a breadboard of that would work for this idea with some changes to the code (ATMega8 processor based).
It could also be something simple like a PIC processor and an RS485 chip on a board with a couple of BCD dip switches to set the start code with. Something like this could easily be built for under $20.
RPM
Okay, I have a couple of ideas. However, I have yet to assemble my first board so take this with a grain of salt.
1. How about a handheld SSR4 start channel programmer? Seems like I recall someone posting about the amount of time spent running back and forth to the PC to do this?
Ron
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That would be nice but remember that the express sets the start channel on the front panel already and the upgrade module we are look at will add this to the Freestyle at a point so don't want to ham string anyone after they work hard on a project.
RJ
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True... this would be of more use to someone who is using the DMX SSR4's without an Express or Freestyle.
The DMX analyzer is pretty cool as it measures the timing and can output a test signal, but it's more of a techie thing then for the average user ;) I use mine mostly for checking DMX dongle timing.
Robert
That would be nice but remember that the express sets the start channel on the front panel already and the upgrade module we are look at will add this to the Freestyle at a point so don't want to ham string anyone after they work hard on a project.
RJ
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I think this is a great idea to send an addressable test signal without the need to use vixen when troubleshooting at the very least.
...just want to add my support.
-Paul
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RJ,
Good point, but even so I know that even with the controllers out in the yard it could be a pain to run back and forth from the controller and SSR's to set the channels.
If someone had lots of SSR4's spread out then having a simple battery powered hand held unit to go around and plug into each device to set the start channel would be much easier than running back to the controller every time to set a new start channel.
Just my 2 cents worth...
Robert
That would be nice but remember that the express sets the start channel on the front panel already and the upgrade module we are look at will add this to the Freestyle at a point so don't want to ham string anyone after they work hard on a project.
RJ
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Ok, heres the whole story.
I have a DMX tester that was one of my toy projects. The problem is I wanted it wireless. So I sat the design a side until the wireless was done. My want was that you could stand in your yard and control any channel or run test sequences with it in your hand without plugging into anything. I plan to be totally wireless this year so it would be nice to pickup your tester and dial up channel 345 and dial it to 60% and have it come on at 60%. Or select a test sequence that runs through every channel to see if you lights are all working.
The design uses a rotary encoder and a 2 line blue LCD display off of an Ebay seller as the interface. The encoder can be pushed as a momentary switch which is the selection method. The plan was to use the wireless module as its communication means. I do not know how long it would be before I have it so if someone wants to build one please go ahead. I just did not want to duplicate. I have the LedTriks II as a priority and it could me a monster project so I may very well not have got to it this year. I would like to have some other development on the forum.
RJ
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OK, I see.... I like the wireless idea, very cool!
Last year I ran my Vixen computer wireless and I used a wireless remote desktop link via laptop and I could sit in my front yard and control things, so I see how a wireless tester could come in handy ;)
Robert
Ok, heres the whole story.
I have a DMX tester that was one of my toy projects. The problem is I wanted it wireless. So I sat the design a side until the wireless was done. My want was that you could stand in your yard and control any channel or run test sequences with it in your hand without plugging into anything. I plan to be totally wireless this year so it would be nice to pickup your tester and dial up channel 345 and dial it to 60% and have it come on at 60%. Or select a test sequence that runs through every channel to see if you lights are all working.
The design uses a rotary encoder and a 2 line blue LCD display off of an Ebay seller as the interface. The encoder can be pushed as a momentary switch which is the selection method. The plan was to use the wireless module as its communication means. I do not know how long it would be before I have it so if someone wants to build one please go ahead. I just did not want to duplicate. I have the LedTriks II as a priority and it could me a monster project so I may very well not have got to it this year. I would like to have some other development on the forum.
RJ
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Go for it guys I'd love to see what you come up with. We need a little less RJ and a little more other peoples stuff!
RJ
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I have a half baked idea of using a fax/modem to decode dtmf and feed the requests to vixen somehow. That way you could use your cell phone (or maybe a cordless) to command channels on/off or a dim level.
I probably have everything I need since I use NCH SwiftSoft IVM for my voicemail server. I know it can do complex interactive voice menus and interact with other programs. But I don't see time to get that all figured out on my radar.
Does anybody else think this could be useful? If so maybe I can take the time to figure out the details.
Sheesh. My second half baked idea on this thread.
Chris
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Go for it guys I'd love to see what you come up with. We need a little less RJ and a little more other peoples stuff!
RJ
No, we want stuff that works! ;)
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OK, I guess it is time to play with DMX transmission... Let me see what I can toss together. The hardware for this is quite easy.
So what features would we want?
- Set channel 'x' to value 'y'.
- Set all channels to 0
- Set all channels to 0xFF (this could be dangerous as it may exceed people's power budget or current limits)
- Special modes to allow setting start channels of various devices?
- A "ripple" mode that rolls a 0xFF from channel 'x' to 'y' to detect crossed output cables?
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OK, I guess it is time to play with DMX transmission... Let me see what I can toss together. The hardware for this is quite easy.
So what features would we want?
- Set channel 'x' to value 'y'.
- Set all channels to 0
- Set all channels to 0xFF (this could be dangerous as it may exceed people's power budget or current limits)
- Special modes to allow setting start channels of various devices?
- A "ripple" mode that rolls a 0xFF from channel 'x' to 'y' to detect crossed output cables?
...can't think of a real reason why but maybe...
Set to channel 'x' and ramp from zero to 255 and back to zero with the ability to pause at any time.
-Paul
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I like RJs idea of running a test sequence which flashes every channel in the universe.
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I just threw this schematic together. It's still missing the power supply - any ideas?
/mike
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Mike,
I've been out of the embedded market for years (decades really) so excuse my ignorance.
1. You only need a nibble for the display data?
2. I know that most if not all of the equipment on this site uses PIC controllers and so most users have the programmers/development tools for PICs not AVR (Microchip Technology vs. Amtel) - potential user base problem.
Looks pretty clean otherwise from my perspective.
-Paul
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Wow... very close to the circuit I've been running for almost a year now. I don't use a keypad, just four switches and my processor is only an Atmega8, so I don't have all the expansion lines. I already have firmware for it, so I was going to add a few more functions and maybe change out the buttons for the rotary encoder RJ suggested.
Robert
I just threw this schematic together. It's still missing the power supply - any ideas?
/mike
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The LCDs work in either 4-bit or 8-bit mode. As for PIC vs. Atmel, I have been using the Atmel line for quite some time now; I switched because at that time there was no good free C compiler for the PICs (many years ago). This could be done with either.
As for the rotrary encoder, I'm not sure how much I would like to be spinning and pressing the knob to select one of 256 or 512 values even if you do it videogame style of select a digit/press to go the next. I'll add a rotary encoder as an alternate to the keypad; once I have the board done, I can try both out and see which works better. Costwise, it's about the same - $3.60 for the encoder or 20 cents a button from Digikey.
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2. I know that most if not all of the equipment on this site uses PIC controllers and so most users have the programmers/development tools for PICs not AVR (Microchip Technology vs. Amtel) - potential user base problem.
I think you're going to see more and more AVR-based stuff in the up-coming months -- N1st and RPM are both developing on that platform and so am I, though the likelihood of anything coming off my bench is much lower ;) ...
LadyAda.net's DASA serial programmer kit is $7.50, while her USBTiny/USB programmer kit is $22. Lower barrier-to-entry cost threshold.
\dmc
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I ordered the parts to put together a tester a while back too, but have been too focused on my dimmer system to get it all thrown together.
I'm planning on using a PIC16F722. I DID order 3 cheap rotary encoders, but I think for my first pass, I'm going to use button up and button down on each digit... total of six buttons(Seems like the fastest channel select method. Buttons could be multiplexed, but I'm not really that worried about running out of IO pins in this design). I've got a slide pot that I'm planning to adc in for the level, and a three segment green led numeric display for output.
All the functionality I was planning was select a channel and the adc level gets spit out on it, with everything else at 0.
After watching this thread... I've got 5 IO lines that aren't in use yet... so that's 5 more buttons without messing with multi-plexing...
So I think I'll add (in version 0.2) :
1. Send the codes to program one of RJ's devices to this channel
2. Everything at 25%
3. Test sequence - .5 second up, then .5 second down on each channel between 0 and the currently selected channel (so I don't have to wait for 400 empty channels to flash if I don't have that many channels in use) with a new channel starting up as the previous channel hits full (every .5 seconds) If current channel is 1, test sequence will test all 512 channels. Pressing test sequence again will cancel test.
and in version .3 :P
4. Capture and release mode - Pressing this key means that each channel that is brought up will stay up until it is brought down... so you can bring up a channel, then dial to another channel, move the slider to a new level (or just wiggle it to 'grab' the channel if you want it at the same level as the one before) Pressing the key again will release all the channels you've 'captured' this way. In my release version, due to memory constraints you'd probably only be able to 'capture' 32 channels at one time... but this is still enough to build a reasonable static look during testing... And the 16F722 is pin compatible with some 18F series parts with enough ram to store a whole DMX packet, so you could just drop in one of those if you want the ability to capture 512 channels... and kick the firmware around a bit. (the other fix, if people thought grabbing more channels was more important than being able to set dimmed levels for them... I could use 64 bytes to do a 'bitmap' of 512 channels for off and on control only in capture and release mode...? I'd love thoughts on whether grabbing 32 channels and setting levels dynamically or being able to turn on and off 512 channels and have them latch till you hit release would be more useful to people?)
and I suppose from there, if you DID go to a chip with more storage and wanted to mutiplex the last input, you could add a couple of 'preset' buttons and a 'record' button to store the current look into the preset buttons, for quick recall later? I'll lose interest in the project before that happens, but someone else could hack it in. :)
I'm at least a month away from really getting into all this, and it sounds like others are working on it too, so I posted my plans in case anyone wants to pillage ideas from them. I probably will be building my tester, because I want to learn what it has to teach as a project, but if someone in the DIY community comes up with a solution first, great! :)
Art
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Mike,
Looks good, but wouldn't the R1/C1 time constant combination cause problems with ICSP programming?
From what I remember, doesn't Atmel specifiy using just a 10K resistor on the reset line if the ICSP is used.
Robert
I just threw this schematic together. It's still missing the power supply - any ideas?
/mike
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The AVRISP MK2 docs recommend no smaller than 4k7. Looking around, I see people are using either 4k7 or 10k resistors for the reset pullup. The time constant shouldn't matter for in-circuit programming as reset is held low for the entire program cycle. As long as the programmer can pull it down, it should be OK.
I have always used 4k75 and haven't had a reset problem (I have about 20K boards with various Atmel processors out in the field). One thing that I have learned is to always use the built-in brownout detector as otherwise the EEPROM can get corrupted. Oh, and you can't enable those fuses from firmware, only from the ISP pod - it gets tiring updating 800 ATMega3250s around the outside of a 3M tall, 3M diameter tester...
For power, I'm looking at using 3 AA cells feeding a boost converter, likely an LM2735X.
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This is all way above my head... but i'm glad you guys are working on it!
John
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I like the idea of using 3AA cells with the LM2735, but that would drive the parts cost up and the LM2735 I believe is only available in surface mount.
I was just going to use a 9v battery with a plain old 7805 regulator... cheap and simple.
Robert
The AVRISP MK2 docs recommend no smaller than 4k7. Looking around, I see people are using either 4k7 or 10k resistors for the reset pullup. The time constant shouldn't matter for in-circuit programming as reset is held low for the entire program cycle. As long as the programmer can pull it down, it should be OK.
I have always used 4k75 and haven't had a reset problem (I have about 20K boards with various Atmel processors out in the field). One thing that I have learned is to always use the built-in brownout detector as otherwise the EEPROM can get corrupted. Oh, and you can't enable those fuses from firmware, only from the ISP pod - it gets tiring updating 800 ATMega3250s around the outside of a 3M tall, 3M diameter tester...
For power, I'm looking at using 3 AA cells feeding a boost converter, likely an LM2735X.
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I was just going to use a 9v battery with a plain old 7805 regulator... cheap and simple.
I'm not criticizing this idea, but am merely using it as a jumping-off point for ranting:
Have you priced 9v batteries recently!?! They are $5! If not more!
I only use them for breadboard testing of my humble little projects, so I had been happy buying them for $1 at the Dollar Store; when DS ran out a few months back, I started looking around for alternate supplies: RS, drug stores, HD, L, etc. Five bucks. Jeeze.
Rant ended. ;) ... Sorry for the OT.
\dmc
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That and you will be wasting half of their capacity heating the regulator. If you don't want to deal with a switcher, use 4 nicads in series to get 5V, or 4 alkalines in series with a dropping diode.
Surface mount isn't too hard to deal with. The SOT-23 that the LM2735 comes in actually has a wider spacing than the TQFP-44 of the processor.
Here's the board so far; I still need to add the bypass caps and the reset parts.
/mike
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I appreciate the input.
I agree... those 9V batteries can get pricey. I would probably use AA cells just because of this, since you can get a brick of 30-40 of them for around $10. I guess my point was that it would need to be a simple circuit to keep cost down and be easy to build, with only DIP IC's.
Robert
I was just going to use a 9v battery with a plain old 7805 regulator... cheap and simple.
I'm not criticizing this idea, but am merely using it as a jumping-off point for ranting:
Have you priced 9v batteries recently!?! They are $5! If not more!
I only use them for breadboard testing of my humble little projects, so I had been happy buying them for $1 at the Dollar Store; when DS ran out a few months back, I started looking around for alternate supplies: RS, drug stores, HD, L, etc. Five bucks. Jeeze.
Rant ended. ;) ... Sorry for the OT.
\dmc
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Mike, Is your tester PCB size and mounting based on a particular enclosure?
Larry
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What's the status of this toy?