Announcing OpenSprinkler Zone Expansion Board v2.0 (16 stations)

A new day, a new post. Today’s post is about the new OpenSprinkler Zone Expansion Board v2.0, with injection-molded enclosure and 16-station capability. The injection-molded enclosure provides a coherent look with the OpenSprinkler main controller; and the 16-station capability adds twice as many stations as before, without taking extra space.

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As I briefly talked about in a previous post, this new version 2.0 is only slightly larger than the previous version 1.1, but can handle twice as many stations. You can think of it as basically two 1.1 boards (8 stations) squeezed together onto a single board that’s roughly the same size as before. What made this possible is a clever design that makes use of the same four support pillars to both attach the top and bottom pieces together, as well as secure the PCB inside the enclosure. This saves some space normally reserved for the PCB screws. The design was proposed by Xavier at SeeedStudio — the principal industrial designer for the project — and it follows the same design adopted for the OpenSprinkler enclosure.

Also, version 2.0 has included per-station bidirectional transient voltage suppressor (TVS) for added electric protection. These are essentially diodes can clamp the voltage if it exceeds a threshold in either direction. This can reduce the chance that a high transient voltage or lightening damages the circuit or the sprinkler solenoid.

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In terms of usage, version 2.0 is the same as 1.1. It works for all of OpenSprinkler, OSPi and OSBo. Use the 2×4 extension cable to link the OUT port of the main controller to the IN port of the expansion board. Additional expansion boards can be daisy-chained in the same way — by following the OUT -> IN links. Because 2.0 and 1.1 have the same cable wiring, they can be mixed and used together.

The firmware currently does not automatically detect the number of stations. So you need to keep in mind that each 2.0 counts as 2 expansion boards (2x 8) in the option settings.

Because of the difficulty in stocking both versions, we have discontinued 1.1 and are only offering 2.0 now. Price-wise, it is a little more expensive than 1.1. So if you only need 8 extra stations, sorry, you have to pay the extra to get 2.0. But if you need a larger number of extra stations, this is a great deal because it’s considerably cheaper and saves a lot of space too.

OpenSprinkler Zone Expansion Board v2.0 is available for purchase at the Rayshobby Shop. We offer bundled discount if you are buying it together with any OpenSprinkler main controller, including OpenSprinkler v2.1s, DIY v2.1u, OSPi and OSBo. Be sure to check the “Add Zone Expansion Board Options” when you purchase. Thank you!

Announcing the OpenSprinkler Mobile App — Native Version (all platforms)

I am very excited to announce that the OpenSprinkler native mobile app is now available on all platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile). A big shout-out to Samer Albahra for his diligent and absolutely fantastic work in developing this app!

Different from the previous OpenSprinkler web app, the native app can be installed as a standard app on your mobile device. This not only enables some new features (such as automatic scanning device, multi-language support) right away, but opens doors for more exciting features in the future, such as push notification and local storage (e.g. representing each station with a photo icon). The app is free, so go ahead and give it a try right now!

os_nativeapp_ui

Requirements:

Let me briely go through the requirements for using the app:

  • Hardware: to use the app you need to have either an OpenSprinkler (v2.0 and above), or OpenSprinkler Pi (OSPi, any version), or OpenSprinkler Beagle (OSBo, any version). Even if you don’t have the hardware, you can set up a software simulation (Dan’s interval_program) on RPi or BeagleBone to try out the firmware and app. OpenSprinkler hardware v1.x is currently not supported. Sorry!
  • Firmware: the app requires OpenSprinkler firmware 2.0.4. If you don’t have this version, please follow the firmware update instructions to upgrade your firmware.
  • App Installation: search for ‘opensprinkler’ in iOS App Store, Android Play Store, or Windows Phone Store, and you should be able to find and install the app.
    • If you like the app, please give a +1 to show your appreciation of Samer’s work!
  • Port Forwarding (optional): unlike the previous web app, you don’t need to set up port forwarding any more if you are accessing the controller within your home network. However, if you want to access the controller outside of your home network (say, when you are traveling), you still need to set up port forwarding on your router. This requires knowing your OpenSprinkler’s IP address and port number (default is 80). Please refer to your router’s user instructions. You can also use dynamic DNS service (such as dyn.com, freeDNS etc.) to set up an easy-to-remember DNS name for your router. Most routers support dynamic DNS service as well.

NOTE to keep in mind: the app provides an alternative front end to the OpenSprinkler controller. The default front end, which is the controller’s webpage (accessed by typing in the controller’s IP in a browser), is still available and functioning. Any operation you apply through the app will also be reflected in the default front end.

Features:

The app has a number of notable new features:

  • Scan For Device: on first-use of the app, you need to input information about your OpenSprinkler device, normally the IP address and device password. Samer found a very clever way to quickly scan the local network and automatically find your OpenSprinkler device. This saves your work of having to find the IP address yourself.
  • Multi-Device Support: the app supports multiple device configurations. This is very useful if you have multiple OpenSprinklers and want to access each individual within the same app.
  • Multi-Language Support: this is another exciting new feature — the app provides language localization. There are currently six supported languages: English, Spanish, Hungarian, German, Italian, and Chinese. Big thank-you to Balazs for starting this feature and Samer for continued development. The translations are mostly provided by the users — for those who have contributed: thank you!

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These are just some of the highlights I would like to bring to your attention. There are plenty of other features that really make the app stand out, such as automatic count-down timer, easy editing of station names and programs, intuitive program preview, instant launch of any existing program (not just the run-once program), import/export configurations. You’ve got to try it out yourself to find out.

To find out additional details, please go to Samer’s website. Discussions of ongoing development are available at the Rayshobby Forum. Samer is continuously supporting the app development. Please kindly leave your comments and suggestions, either in the comments section below, or on the forum. Thanks!

Funky Design of the New OpenSprinkler Pi (OSPi) v1.4

Curious what the next version of OpenSprinkler Pi (OSPi) is going to look like? Here is a sneakpeak preview of version 1.4:

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Wait a minute, what is this strange looking board?! And the Pi is installed at an angle? What’s happening here? Well, the new design is all centered around one simple goal: to fit OSPi and RPi into the existing OpenSprinkler injection-molded enclosure. There are many good reasons to do so. The first is cost reduction: the current OSPi uses the Serpac WM032 enclosure with custom cutouts. This is quite expensive to make. On the other hand, the microcontroller-based OpenSprinkler already has an injection-molded enclosure (and I paid a good amount of money for the mold!), so it makes sense to consolidate the design to use the same enclosure. This will bring down the cost quite a bit. Using the same enclosure also gives both products a consistent look. In fact, in the near future OpenSprinkler Beagle will also adopt the same enclosure, and hence all three will have the same exterior look.

Design Story

The ‘why’ part is easy to explain. But the ‘how’ part proves to a non-trivial engineering challenge. When I was first fiddling with the idea I didn’t think it was at all possible. After all, the injection-molded enclosure was made before OSPi came into place, naturally it was not designed with RPi in mind. It turns out that, due to the positions of the support pillars, the enclosure is just a little bit too narrow to fit RPi at a straight angle. Ouch! But after staring at it for a while like a geometric puzzle, I was delighted to find out that if you rotate RPi by 3 to 4 degrees, it fits perfectly! This gave me inspiration to further develop the idea. It also explains why the Pi has to be installed at an angle, as the picture at the top shows.

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In fact, by carefully positioning the Pi, the Ethernet cable can also fit, albeit through the USB cutout instead of the RJ45 cutout. It’s a bit tricky to figure out the position precisely, but I am glad that after two rounds of prototypes I finally got it right 🙂

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Of course since OSPi doesn’t have buttons and LCD, some of the cutouts are useless. I am not completely sure what to do with the LCD cutout. If I leave it alone, it looks quite ugly (see picture on the left below). So my temporary solution is to just put a sticky label at the back, thus covering the big empty hole (see picture on the right below). Eventually I think it’s best to put some graphic design here. I am undecided what to put here. It shouldn’t be the OpenSprinkler logo as the enclosure already has a printed logo. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments section. I would greatly appreciate it!

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Next, because the injection-molded enclosure is not high enough, I cannot continue using the current design where the Pi faces up and connects to OSPi through ribbon cables. It’s necessary to flip the Pi and plug it into OSPi facing down. This will reduce the height of the overall assembly. However, there is one additional complication: the USB, Ethernet, and composite video connectors on the Pi are all quite tall, so it’s necessary to make cutouts on the OSPi PCB to allow these connectors to sink below the board. The picture on the left below shows the back of the PCB, and you can see where the connectors go through the board.

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As the Pi is now facing down, it’s not easy to access the GPIO pins directly. Therefore I’ve mapped out all the 2×13 pins on the Pi to the pinout area, seen at the top-left corner of the PCB.

The last bit of the puzzle is the SD card. Since the enclosure has very limited space, it’s not possible to fit a full-size SD card, without making a cutout on the side. So we need a low-profile SD card. There are several options, one is this microSD to SD adapter. It’s basically a microSD card slot soldered onto a PCB shaped like an SD card but half the size. This and other similar adapters are readily available online and they work reasonably well.

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While Googling ‘low-profile SD card’, I found an surprising solution that’s dead simple. In case you don’t know this already: many full-size SD cards are actually half empty. What this means is that the useful stuff (namely the chip and connectors) only take half the space, while the other half has nothing in it! As a result, you can safely cut half of the card away, thus making a low-profile SD card without any adapter. This also has the advantage of preserving the high performance of a full-size SD card (while the microSD card is considerably slower). The downside though, is that if you ever need to insert the SD card to your computer’s SD card slot, you will have to tape the other half back, so that it extends to the original length. Otherwise it will be too short to push in and pop out.

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Anyways, this is the end of the story. I admit the new funky design feels a bit forced: it’s born out of the need to re-use the injection-molded enclosure, which wasn’t designed with OSPi in mind. But I am quite excited that I figured out all the pieces of the puzzle. Eventually I may pay a sizable chunk of money to order a new mold dedicated to OSPi, but before that happens we have to stick with the existing resources 🙂

The hardware components remain largely the same with version 1.3. The only difference is that the relay has been upgraded to a slightly bigger, 250V / 3A type. I am also considering adding a pin header for the nRF24L01 transceiver, to make it possible to communicate with our upcoming products such as OpenSprinkler Bee. Pending a few minor tweaks, things should be finalized within a month or two. Please leave your comments and suggestions, as this will be the last chance to influence the final design of 1.4. Thanks!

SquareWear 3D Printed Strap-on Case, April Fool’s Prank, and Temperature Display Demo

The past week has seen some nice community contributions to SquareWear 2.0. The first is a 3D printed strap-on case designed by Paul Modiano:

Very nice and makes SquareWear truly wearable 🙂 The add-on module in the picture is an ADXL335 accelerometer which takes analog pins A4, A2 and A3. The 3D files can be downloaded from Thingiverse. Thanks Paul for designing this case!

Next is an April fool’s day prank created by Steve Edwards. I don’t have a picture of it, but here is Steve’s description from the comments section:

Great platform for April Fools.

I wrote a sketch that ‘delays’ for 3 hours (to give you a chance to hide the Square and for the victim to fall asleep) and then runs 2 tasks:

1) Every x seconds, beep y tones, of z frequency where x, y, and z are random()ized.

2) Every hour blast out 30 random frequency tones to make sure the victim is awake.

Also, before each tone is played, I check to see if the light sensor is less than 2 so if the victim turns on the lights to look for it, it stops ‘beeping.’

I hid 3 in my son’s room. He didn’t think it was so funny 🙂

Sounds like a fun gadget to annoy someone 🙂

I also got an email from Pete Metcalfe who wrote a temperature display demo using SquareWear 2 and the chainable LED matrix. He made a compact display by creating a new, 3×5 pixel array of numbers. The source code is posted below.

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I am so glad to see SquareWear 2.0 being gradually picked up by the community, and the interesting applications created and shared by users. More to come later!


// Pete's temperature display demo
void loop(){
float temp = (float)analogRead(PINTEMP);
temp = (temp * 3.3 / 1024 - 0.5) / 0.01; // MCP9700.MCP9700A
clearStrip();
// define a 3x5 pixel array
int nums[10][13] = {
{ 0, 1, 2, 7, 9,14,16,21,23,28,29,30,30}, //0
{ 1, 8, 9,15,22,28,29,30,30,30,30,30,30}, //1
{ 0, 1, 2, 7,14,15,16,23,28,29,30,30,30}, //2
{ 0, 1, 2, 7,14,15,16,21,28,29,30,30,30}, //3
{ 0, 2, 7, 9,14,15,16,21,28,28,28,28,28}, //4
{ 0, 1, 2, 9,14,15,16,21,28,29,30,30,30}, //5
{ 2, 9,14,15,16,21,23,28,29,30,30,30,30}, //6
{ 0, 1, 2, 7,14,21,28,28,28,28,28,28,28}, //7
{ 0, 1, 2, 7, 9,14,15,16,21,23,28,29,30}, //8
{ 0, 1, 2, 7, 9,14,15,16,21,28,28,28,28} //9
};
int dig10 = int(temp/10);
int dig1 = temp - (dig10*10);
for(int i = 0; i < 13 ; i++){ strip.setPixelColor((nums[dig10][i]+4),0,0,255); } for(int i = 0; i < 13 ; i++){ strip.setPixelColor((nums[dig1][i]),0,0,255); } strip.show(); delay(2000); } void clearStrip(){ for(int i = 0; i < strip.numPixels(); i++){ strip.setPixelColor(i,0,0,0); } strip.show(); }

Preview of OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) First Prototype

Update: check out our new standalone OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) 2.0 with built-in WiFi and OLED display.

It has been a month since my last post. Apologies for being silent for a month. In the meantime a lot of new exciting projects are happening. Today I am going to show you the first prototype of OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) — a programmable sprinkler timer for battery-operated valves.

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Like the classic OpenSprinkler, OSBee is an open-source Arduino-based sprinkler timer. The main difference is that OSBee is designed to work with battery-operated sprinkler valves. It’s powered by two AA batteries. In contrast, the classic OpenSprinkler is powered by 24V AC wall adapters. Also, OSBee does not have built-in Ethernet interface, but it has a 2.4G RF transceiver (nRF24L01) and I am considering leaving spaces to add additional modules such as XBee and Bluetooth. This way OSBee can communicate with a base station or a smart phone, for creating web or smartphone-based user interface.

The name ‘Bee’ comes from the abbreviation Battery-Enabled Extension. It’s co-incidence that it sounded more like XBee. It may very well have an XBee slot in the end, but the name was not intended to imply XBee. Also, ‘Bee’ reminds me of the garden, and gardens need to be watered, so, there is the connection. Different from the classic OpenSprinkler, OSBee now comes with a water-proof enclosure, which means it can be left outdoors, such as in a garden, and will do its work diligently, like a Bee 🙂

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The history of OpenSprinkler Bee traces all the way back to my very first Arduino-based sprinkler timer project — the Minty Water Valve Controller. It is a wireless sprinkler timer that is small enough to fit inside a mint tin. That was summer 2010 and I was shopping for a sprinkler controller for my new installed lawn. I was starting to learn about Arduino and had this great inspiration to design and make my own sprinkler controller using an Arduino 🙂 There I made it, and I posted a video about it (see below).

It was soon spotted by Chris Anderson, currently the CEO of 3D Robotics. We then started collaborating on the OpenSprinkler project. After some market research, we figured out that most common household sprinkler systems (particularly underground sprinkler systems) use the 24V AC sprinkler valves. That’s why instead of focusing on battery-operated valves, we started designing the classic OpenSprinkler for 24V AC valves. But battery-operated sprinkler valves are also very useful — they are power-efficient, most of them can be hooked up with garden hoses so they are very mobile — you can move them anywhere you have watering need. So far forward four years to now, after releasing the classic OpenSprinkler and its variants OSPi and OSBo, I’ve finally decided to finish up what I started a long time ago, that is, the OSBee!

Technical Details

For the technical minded, here are some details about the prototype design:

  • ATmega328 microcontroller, classic Arduino stuff 🙂
  • Powered by two AA batteries, which are boosted to 3.3V VCC using Microchip’s MCP1640 (same design with first-generation AASaver). MCP1640 has a bypass mode, allowing it to turn off boosting when microcontroller is sleeping. This way it can maximally save power.
  • nRF24L01 2.4G RF transceiver. This is one of the most popular and lowest-cost RF transceivers. This chip has excellent operating voltage range (1.9V to 3.6V) and reasonable transmission range (up to a couple hundred meters?). It also has a version with amplification which can extend the transmission range to a kilometer!
  • SMT buzzer, push-button, 16KB EEPROM (borrowed from SquareWear 2,0 and Mini design)
  • PWM-driven boost converter with software defined boost voltage, and an H-bridge to drive sprinkler solenoid. This allows OSBee to interface with many types of valves at different operating voltages, such as 9V, 12V, 24V.
  • Soil moisture sensor using a capacitive soil moisture probe and a Schmidt trigger oscillator to measure capacitance. This will provide OSBee with the capability of soil moisture based control.
  • Serpac 121 enclosure with water-proof perimeter seal.

One tricky part with preserving the water-proof design is how to make the connection from the controller to the sprinkler valve. To lower the cost, I have to stick with off-the-shelf enclosures, which means minimal customization. The current solution I figured is to simply drill two small holes and insert two wires through the holes. Then you can seal the holes with some hot glue or water-proof spray. Not the most elegant solution, but simple.

Also, the choice of AA batteries (as opposed to rechargeable Lithium batteries) is due to the consideration that the controller may be left outdoor during hot summer days. In this case the temperature can potentially rise up to 60 degrees Celsius, which is very unhealthy to Lithium batteries.

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So there you go, the first prototype of OpenSprinkler Bee. I am in the process of finalizing the design. Comments and suggestions are much appreciated!

Announcing OpenSprinkler Hardware 2.1s (assembled), Firmware 2.0.4, and a GUI-based Firmware Upgrade Tool

This is an official announcement of several recent OpenSprinkler updates: the fully assembled OpenSprinkler 2.1s, a new firmware revision 2.0.4, and a GUI-based firmware update tool.

First, the hardware:

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So what’s new in OpenSprinkler 2.1s? Here are the main updates:

  • ATmega644 mcu running at 12MHz with USBasp bootloader.
  • Added per-station transient voltage suppressor (TVS).
  • Added TVS and 2A fuse on the 24V AC line.
  • 24V AC terminal block is changed to orange-colored with 3.96mm spacing.
  • Added on-board 120V/2A mini-relay.

These pretty much follow the same updates we made in the DIY kit 2.1u. With these updates, it brings the fully assembled 2.1s to the same page, in terms of hardware features, with all other OpenSprinkler variants (e.g. OSPi, OSBo). OpenSprinkler v2.1s is now available for purchase at the Rayshobby Shop.

Next, the firmware 2.0.4:

This is a minor revision, but with important changes in preparation for Samer Albahra’s awesome new OpenSprinkler Mobile App. This new app is snappier and even more polished than the current version. It will have native apps on all mobile platforms. and it will also have cool new features such as language localization (yay!) and automatic discovery of OpenSprinkler devices. I am very grateful for Samer’s help and continued contributions to this project, and I’d also like to thank Balazs for contributing to the weather and the language localization features.

So technically what have changed in this firmware? Since I have never blogged about firmware 2.0.2 and 2.0.3, I ‘ve included the accumulated changes below:

  1. Added support for JSON and fixed several bugs.
  2. Added support to change Javascript URL.
  3. Stores controller operation enable bit, manual mode bit, rain delay time in EEPROM.
  4. More options are made editable through the web interface.
  5. Added support to change time manually (enabled when NTP sync is turned off).
  6. Added LCD auto-dimming feature (after 30 seconds of inactivity, the LCD brightness will lower down to the LCD Dimming value set in options).

About the first bullet, let me explain with more details. Support for JSON output has been added since firmware 2.0.2. This is very useful for integrating OpenSprinkler with mobile apps, external control programs, and jQuery and AJAX in the future. The specific JSON outputs are:

  • http://x.x.x.x/jo: returns options.
  • http://x.x.x.x/jc: returns controller variables.
  • http://x.x.x.x/jp: returns program data.
  • http://x.x.x.x/jn: returns station names and data.
  • http://x.x.x.x/js: returns station status bits.

where x.x.x.x is the OpenSprinkler’s IP address. Right now the JSON code co-exists with code that spits out HTML pages, so there is a considerable amount of redundancy. This will soon change and the code will be significantly simplified in the near future.

About the second bullet, the firmware now supports Javascript files stored anywhere, including on a microSD card inserted in the controller itself. These Javascript files are required to render the controller webpages. They are usually too big to store in the microcontroller internally, but can be stored on an external path. The default path is http://rayshobby.net/scripts/java/svc2.0.4. To change it, use http://x.x.x.x/su, where x.x.x.x is your OpenSprinkler’s IP address. To host the Javascript locally on the microSD card, copy the necessary Javascript files to a microSD card (2GB or less, formatted to FAT), and insert to OpenSprinkler. Then change the Javascript path to . (i.e. a dot), indicating the files are served locally. With these changes, the controller can be truly independent, without the need to reference the Internet. So you can access the controller even if your local network is not connected to the Internet.

Firmware 2.0.4 is compatible with OpenSprinkler 2nd generation (including 2.0s and 2.1s/u). The source code is available for download at the OpenSprinkler Github repository. Please note that 2.0 and 2.1 use different microcontroller frequencies (8MHz and 12MHz respectively), therefore the compiled firmware files are different for them. If you’d like to upgrade to this firmware, please read on.

Finally, the GUI-based Firmware Update Tool:

Update: the information below is outdated. Please check the new OpenSprinkler Firmware Updater 2.0.


As OpenSprinkler has gone through many different hardware and firmware revisions, updating firmware has become more and more confusing. That’s why I’ve decided to make a GUI-based firmware update tool. This doesn’t completely get rid of the technical challenges, but it certainly makes the process less confusing 🙂

The updater is written in Processing, so it’s naturally cross-platform. The usage is pretty simple: you select your OpenSprinkler hardware version, and the updater provides a list of available firmwares. You select which firmware you want (defaults to the latest version), and click on Upload. That’s it. The GUI provides some basic descriptions of the hardware (in case you forget which hardware you have), and instructions to enter bootloading mode.

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The firmware information is all stored in a file named os_firmware_info.txt. The avrdude program is packaged together with the tool so you do not need to install it separately (except in Linux, where you can easily install avrdude by sudo apt-get install avrdude).

There is one remaining piece, though — if you are a Windows user, you need to install USBtinyISP driver (for OpenSprinkler 1st-gen and OpenSprinkler 2.0) or USBasp driver (for OpenSprinkler 2.1u/s). Please refer to the Firmware Update instructions for additional details. This is probably the biggest technical hurdle and we are trying to find a more user-friendly solution. Basically, if you are using Windows XP, Vista, or 7 users, it’s not too bad; but if you are using Windows 8, it gets really messy — you need to disable driver enforcement before you can install the drivers. If you are lost, try to google ‘Windows 8 USBtinyISP’, or ‘Windows 8 USBasp’ and you should be able to find successful solutions.

If for the life of yours you simply cannot get the driver installed, you are resort to the Rayshobby pre-configured VirtualBox image — is creates a Virtual Linux in your host Windows OS, and passes the USB programmer directly to the Virtual OS, thus bypassing the Windows driver issue.

The Firmware Updater Tool can be downloaded following the links below:

Please run the ‘osFirmwareUpdater’ program in the folder that corresponds to your operating system.

Note: if you see messages such as avrdude: warning: cannot set sck period. Please check for usbasp firmware update., and avrdude: error: usbasp_transmit: usbasp_control_msg: sending control message failed, these are normal and can be safely ignored. These warnings / errors have to do with the behavior of the bootloader upon reset. They do NOT mean the firmware upload has failed.

Mac Users: if you encounter an error Application is damaged and can’t be opened, you need to temporarily change a Security and Privacy setting in System Preferences. See the details in this work-around.

This is a first step towards making the update process more user friendly. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Introducing SquareWear Mini, with All-New Chainable Color LED Matrix, and an Interactive Animation Design Tool

Liked how SquareWear 2.0 has so many built-in components and yet so compact in size? Introducing SquareWear Mini — the little sister of SquareWear that has the same capabilities (and more!) but is 25% smaler in size!

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SquareWear Mini

Available for purchase at Rayshobby Shop.

So what is SquareWear Mini? Similar to SquareWear 2.0, the SquareWear Mini is essentially an Arduino running at 3.3V and 12MHz. It is based on the ATmega328 microcontroller, and it has a load of build-in components, including USB port, power switch, pushbutton, buzzer, temperature sensor, light sensor, MOSFETs, lithium battery jack, and lithium battery charger. The pins have enlarged sizes for sewing with conductive threads, for soldering sew-on snaps, and they are great for touch sensing too.

How did I shrink it to be smaller than the original SquareWear? Well, by removing the on-board rechargable coin battery and color LED, and routing some pins to the side. With the space saved, I was even able to add a 16KB I2C EEPROM for storing extra data. Shortly you will see how this is useful. These changes were made because SquareWear designed specially to be attached to a chainable color LED matrix. This will enable a whole new set of exciting projects, as you can see from the video above.

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Color LED Matrix

So let me briefly explain the LED matrix. Each matrix contains 35 LEDs arranged on a 5×7 grid with 8mm spacing. It uses the WS2812B color LEDs. These are great because the LED has a built-in chip that allows you to daisey chain them in bulk and still be able to individually set the color of any LED with only one microcontorller pin. Adafruit gave them a name calle the Neopixels. No matter how many LEDs you have, you only need 3 pins to get them to work, namely the VCC, GND, and DATA_IN pins.

These pins are mapped out at the back of the LED matrix. The locations of these pins exactly match the VCC, GND, and digital D10 pins on SquareWear Mini, so you can easily attach SquareWear Mini with the LED matrix by either soldering some sew-on snaps, or directly soldering the two boards together.

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The resolution 5×7 is not a whole lot, but it is sufficient to display ASCII characters and a lot of cute icons:

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The LED matrix is designed to be chainable too. Each board has DATAIND pins on one side, and DATAOUT on the other side. To extend the number of boards in the X direction, just place two matrices side by side and solder across the 6 pins on the boundary. The solder will get the two boards firmly attached to each other. Chain several boards together to make a large display panel, and it’s great for showing text and messages in any color you want. For example, you can use it as a name tag, or a thermometer (remember, SquareWear Mini has a built-in temperature sensor!)

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You can also extend the panel in the Y direction. To do so, use three wires to connect the VCC, GND, and DATA_OUT pins of the previous row to the VCC, GND, DATA_IN pins of the next row. Also solder across the pins on the vertical direction to firmly attach the two rows of boards together. There you go, a bigger panel to display more detailed graphics!

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Software Demos

We’ve re-worked the SquareWear software library to include LED matrix demos. These demos work on both the original SquareWear 2.0 and SquareWear Mini. Check the video above for selected examples. The demos are included in the pre-configured software package, and are also available for downloaded individually at the SquareWear Github repository.

What I want to highlight here is the Flipbook Animation demo. It’s a great demo that allows you to interactively design pixel patterns and even an animation. SquareWear Mini can store the frame data into the I2C EEPROM and play it back later. Even better, it comes with sounds too! So how does this work? First, you upload the Flipbook Arduino code to SquareWear. Then, run the Flipbook host software. The host software is written in Processing and is cross-platform. It uses the HID Serial interface to communicate with SquareWear. In the host software you can click on pixels and assign them color values. These values are immediately transferred to SquareWear so you can preview the frame in real-time. For each frame you can specify the frame time and optionally a music note to play. You can create multiple frames, navigate through each frame, make modifications, save the animation to a disk file etc. At last, when you are satisfied with it, click on ‘Transfer to Device’ and the data will be stored into EEPROM. Next time you turn on SquareWear, just click the pushbutton and it will play back the stored animation. Isn’t that cool? With this tool, you never have to think about converting pixel patterns to programming code any more. Let your creativity and imagination take over!

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Hope you like SquareWear Mini, and let us know your cool project ideas!

SquareWear 2.0 used at Mount Holyoke College’s iDesign Studio Class

This past week has been a hectic week. Since SquareWear 2.0 got posted on Hack A Day, things have gone quite wild: we’ve got hundreds of orders, and the SquareWear YouTube video accumulated 80,000 views in just two days. By the end of last week, it has exceeded 100,000 views and has officially become the most popular video at the my YouTube channel.

Among the many emails I received, one common question is what can one use SquareWear for other than the examples demonstrated in the video. Well, at heart SquareWear 2.0 is really just a small Arduino with lots of built-in components (notably built-in rechargeable battery and USB port). The large pin pads make it suitable for wearable electronics projects, and the small size makes it suitable for general-purpose microcontroller projects. For example, I’ve used SquareWear to build a reflow oven controller, a OpenSprinkler Pi tester, a USB-based remote for RF power sockets. It’s really versatile.

If you are looking to make some artistic projects, you will be glad to hear this: SquareWear 2.0 was used at the Mount Holyoke College for their iDesign Studio Class. This class was offered by my friend Audrey Lee last semester, and they’ve just concluded the class last month with a fantastic final presentation. I am going to highlight some of the best projects below. For additional information, check the link above — each project has a website with detailed write-up. I am sure they will inspire you to come up with your own fantastic project idea.

One of my favorite is the Accelexpression project by Madeline Ketley. She combined a SquareWear with a gyro sensor and NeoPixel LED strip to make a smart skirt for dancers. The LED strip displays different colors depending on the standing position of the dancer. It is not only artistic and visually beautiful, but it’s a very useful tool for training dancers: from the color of the LEDs you can easily tell if the dancer is standing straight, or if two dancers are synchronized in their moves. It’s a brilliant idea and I was completely impressed. Here are some rather blurry pictures. I wish I had taken high-quality pictures or even better a video!

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Another favorite of mine is Meaghan Sullivan’s Reading Hardwired. Meaghan made a hand-drawn picture book featuring a timid and cute cameleon. She then combined a SquareWear, copper sheets, some neopixels, and photo-resistors to make the picture book change colors as you turn the pages. It’s so artistic, vivid, and truly brilliant!
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Neopixels seems to be a big hit among students. Alexis Andrus used strips of Neopixels to make a beatuful iDesign Jacket; Ione Brogna also used Neopixel strips to make iTech Accessories, such as these stylish shoulder straps belts. Ione also added a sound sensor to SquareWear and made her iTech accessories respond to music and beats.

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Next up, with Julia Rycyna’s La Coeur du Dragon project, we enter the fantasy land of dragons. She first made a plush dragon with flapping wings using a SquareWear and some muscle wires. Thanks to the build-in MOSFETs on SquareWear, no external muscle wire drivers were needed. Then she added a ultrasonic distance sensor and a LED heart to the dragon, so that the heart blinks faster as you approach the dragon. Quick, hold it tight, how can you bear with putting such a lovely dragon down!

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Safae Lahgazi Alaoui presented an amazingly artistic project called the Interactive Mirror. The mirror is decorated with LEDs and responds to sound, touch, and motion. Check the images below and appreciate the complexity of the mirror.

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Eva Snyder’s musicTouch project is a great educational tool to teach kids about music and tones. It uses conductive ink and touch sensing to let you play music interactively. If you are interested, be sure to check out my previous blog post about how to use SquareWear to create a touch-based digital piano without any additional hardware.

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Thinking of some other creative uses of SquareWear? Saadia Gabriel made a solar charging jacket called The Turtle? It makes use of SquareWear to charge a lithium battery, which is then bumped to 5V using a boost converter for charging cell phones. Athena Donta and MJ Lee created the Bad Weather Wear project, which combines a SquareWear, LED matrix, and conductivity sensor onto a pair of mittens. When it rains or snows, the LED matrix displays smileys and different patterns to keep you happy in bad weather. Isn’t that sweet?

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If you are inspired by these projects, consider getting a SquareWear 2.0 from our shop. It’s a great little gadget to help explore the creative and artistic side of you!

SquareWear 2.0 Touch Sensing and Digital Piano Demo

Looking for new projects to do with SquareWear 2.0? Here is an idea: combine SquareWear 2.0 with touch sensing to make a digital piano! It works as a standalone project and no additional hardware is required. Take a look at the video first:

How does this work? First, SquareWear 2.0 has a built-in buzzer, so it can already make sound. Next, touch sensing is detected in software. It basically exploits the principle of capacitive sensing: every time you touch an Arduino pin, it slightly alters the capacitance of the pin. This change of capacitance can be detected using a variety of methods. The simplest is to set the pin to digital input mode, and turn on the internal pull-up resistor. This will start charging the capacitor. By detecting the time it takes to charge the capacitor, you can infer the capacitance, and in turn tell if a finger touch has occurred on the pin. That’s it! Because SquareWear maps out available pins to large pin pads, this makes it particularly well-suited for touch sensing.

So I wrote a quick demo as a proof-of-concept. First, I found a function that implements the capacitive sensing from the Arduino playground website. It basically returns a touching sensing value, which can then be compared to a threshold. You may need to adjust the threshold to increase or decrease the sensitivity. The demo scans through all 12 pins available on the SquareWear 2.0 and plays a tone for 125 milliseconds if a pin touch is detected. As a result, the buzzer makes a chiptune type of sound. The code also uses the on-board pushbutton to switch between three octaves: C3, C4, and C5. The LED will blink when a tone is played.

A few notes and quirks:

  • The code works the best if you plug in a USB cable connected to your computer.
  • You can also moisten your figures to help increase the touch sensitivity.
  • If you unplug the USB cable, it generally helps if you use one hand to hold the battery, or the VCC or GND pin. You may need to cover the ISP pins on the back side to avoid touching them. Holding the battery, VCC or GND helps amplify small capacitive changes.
  • The MOSFET pins (D3, D5, D6) do not seem to work well without the USB cable. To be honest, I was surprised that these pins even worked at all, because the pads are not directly connected to the pins (rather, the connection is through a MOSFET). So if you need, you can modify the source code to disable these pins.

The demo code is available in the SquareWear 2.0 software package on Github. The direct download link is below:

I will keep posting new project ideas in the upcoming weeks. SquareWear 2.0 is available for purchase at the Rayshobby Shop. At a price of $22 and with a load of built-in components, it’s a great little gadget to help you learn Arduino programming, and build wearable as well as general-purpose electronic projects. Hope you like this demo and your support is greatly appreciated!

OpenSprinkler v2.1u Semi-Assembled DIY Kit Available Now!

Great news, OpenSprinkler v2.1u semi-assembled DIY kit has now been officially released and available immediately for purchase at the Rayshobby Shop! This version marks a major upgrade from the previous DIY kit v1.42u. With ATmega644 MCU, microSD card slot, and injection-molded enclosure, it not only brings the DIY kit up to speed with the fully assembled v2.0s, but it actually strives to be a little better (hence the migration on the version number) 🙂

In particular, it adds a mini-relay for general purpose switching (similar to the one on OpenSprinkler Beagle), changed the 24VAC terminal to an orange colored one with different pin spacing, and increased MCU frequency from 8MHz to 12Mhz. It also uses a USBasp bootloader built-in on the ATmega644 MCU for firmware flashing (while all previous versions use a separate ATtiny45 chip). The USBasp bootloader significantly improves the firmware upload speed, and is therefore very helpful if you are making frequent changes to the firmware. These changes are all described in the prototype sneakpeak preview post. Finally, the MCU is pre-loaded with the latest firmware 2.0.3 with several new features compared to the previous firmwares.

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Another notable change is that v2.1u is the first semi-assembled DIY kit which comes with a partially assembled circuit board with through-hole components. I’ve designed it this way to help reduce the amount of soldering you have to do, while still let you enjoy the process of building, assembling, testing, and hacking the circuit. It’s a first-time experiment, so I will keep my fingers crossed.

In any case, if you’ve been waiting for OpenSprinkler DIY kits, go grab one quickly before it’s gone; if you already own an OpenSprinkler or have heard of OpenSprinkler one way or another, I would appreciate if you can help me spread the word. Thanks!

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