Das BlinkenSphere

2013-03-30 | Permalink

zo relaxen und watschen das blinkensphere

My latest weekend project was to find a use for an Arduino that (due to some recent electromechanical fail on my part) could only be powered over USB.

After a few false starts, and with a lot of ideas left to implement, the first prototype is ready:

Das BlinkenSphere

It’s a little sphere-like object that now sits quietly on my desk and emits a soothing color-of-choice.

By default, it’s blue, because, you know, everything must be blue these days.

But of course, just having some colored light isn’t any fun, or any use, so it’s controlled by my computer; It has a direct client to set it to any (rgb) color, but the most direct use is the ‘bs_run’ command; any command prepended with ‘bs_run’ will make it orange for the duration of the command, and either red or green when the command finishes (respectively when it succeeds or fails).

So now I can let those long compilations or test runs do their thing, and no longer have to regularly check if they are done; the light will inform me.

Cast your light upon us, for the code is dark and full of errors

I also built in support for light sequences and transitions, but still need to write client control code for that (and find any use for it).

Now I need to find something to compile.