Tag Archives: arduino

Artemis v1.22: The new automation module

As you may have noticed, I love calling everything a “module” more and more. And with good reason: If you build a project of this size, splitting up in modules makes sense. It allows you to focus on PART of the problem, and replace the module if you find something smarter / better.

Required specs for the new automation hardware

As I was building out something new, I figured it should be big and bad enough to handle anything I want to throw at it, PLUS have room for future expansion. As I was falling in love with many smaller light sources again, and the RGB-CCT led panels, I came to the conclusion that whatever hardware I build, it has to have MANY channels I can use to control and possibly dim all hardware. Just as an idea, I wanted to use three RGB-CCT led panels, and those use 5 channels each for red, green, blue, cold- and warm white. So that is 15 PWM channels at 24V already maxing out an Arduino Mega (which has exactly 15 PWM outputs). So I needed more. Time to grab back to my faithful PCA9586 PWM I2C-based controllers. I would not place them onboard this time, but design them as separate modules that I could either place on top of the Artemis Controller, or optionally somewhere else (just running power to them and the I2C connection).

In the end, this is the huge wishlist I cam up with regarding the automation hardware:

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Artemis hard- and software = WORKING!

After more testing, more writing code and more debugging I have finally managed to call the code inside the Artemis as COMPLETE. The last few bits and pieces came together, so next step will be to work on the higher level software inside the Raspberry Pi.

Artemis has been put through it paces. It all seems to work OK now, Although I did need to make some changes here and there…

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NeoPixel Ledstrip: Working

So The “smart” led strips with the WS2812b smart leds on board refused to work initially. After a lot of debugging I figured out that the first NeoPixel, the onboard ws2812b was the culprit. It just would not work properly, even though it would pass the bitbanged stuff to the rest of the led strip in the correct way.

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