Category: Projects

POV poi image to circle

* please note this program no longer works, the script is not running anymore. I may look at this again one day.

What does this do? Visualize poi image as it is spinning around, software turns rectangular image into circular representation of poi image arc.

Select and upload your poi image (best results with 72px image) – only one at a time at the moment for testing. Currently only .jpg format supported.

wait for rotation

If page says “oops that page can’t be reached”, refresh after a couple of seconds – this is alpha version so not perfect.

Upload files

This program is optimized for visualizing SmartPoi (72px version) - the worlds first wireless streaming poi. See circusscientist.com for more details.

Lets stream some Pixels

First things first, have you tried setting up the breadboard test circuit?

Does the SmartPoiOffline sketch upload correctly, and display on 36 connected LED’s? (if you have a longer strip and don’t want to cut it, that’s fine, the rest will just be blank)

Ok it’s time to try streaming pixels.

First load the SmartPoiBasicStreaming sketch to your microcontroller. Right now this is only being tested on the D1 mini, but should work on any ESP8266 board.

The SmartPoiBasicStreaming_UDP_Send program works on PC or Android, you just need Processing IDE with Android Mode installed if you want to do Android.

First, switch on the D1 Mini with LED strip attached. Wait for the led’s to finish cycling their startup pattern, then you need to use the wifi settings to connect the device (PC, Android*) which is running the processing code to the Smart_Poi_2 access point. The password is for this test is: “bluefire”.

*Note: since Marshmallow version, Android has had a nasty “captive portal” detection which refuses to connect to AP’s unless they are able to access the internet. I understand why they did this (security), but without root the only workaround is to put the device in Airplane mode, then switch on WiFi while still in Airplane mode, and connect from there. The annoying notification should be ignored, as there is an option to “never connect to this network” in there somewhere and it will trip you up.  I should probably do a post about this. Just swipe it away, don’t click!!!

Once connected, start the program. Welcome to the world of streaming poi.

A couple of notes: the test program is not POV, it’s an animation (cylon effect) as this is easier to see on a breadboard. I have a complicated program to send images to the poi which are seen only when they are spun, however it’s easier right now to just start with a simple app for testing.

This program does demonstrate one advantage of streaming as opposed to rendering purely on the poi – that is control. It is trivial to change the colour from the random colours I have chosen to any you could wish. I had another version of this program with three knobs which can change the R, G, B values being sent. You could do a curve instead of straight lines, make the line fatter or thinner, slower, faster, and much more.

Have a go, and let me know what you think. Coming soon: more POV poi shenannigans!

 

 

 

Time for some Poi Sync

The esp8266 is an amazing chip. On my poi the Master* poi creates a wireless access point which the Slave* poi connects to – and Android app connects as well, in order to transmit images. No router needed, just switch on poi, 2nd poi connect automatically, connect phone and start sending pictures.

*I have designated these names, for descriptive purposes.

There are limits, however. The ESP chips have a limitation of 4 connected devices per access point device. If you want more devices talking to each other you need a Router to handle the traffic.

This is fairly simple using arduino examples but it brings up configuration issues. I wanted my poi to be able to be used in standalone as well as Master-Slave-Android configuration, and now Router-Multiple-Poi-Android as well. A few settings are in order.

The first option, standalone poi without wireless, I configured directly in the loop() of code. If no wifi signal has been received within the last 5 seconds the poi switch to backup images. Great, if my phone’s battery dies the show still goes on.

The second alternative (Router) is a bit harder to organize. First, there is a limitation where the chip has to be told if it’s in Access Point mode or not on boot. Ok so that’s a setting. Then we need to know what the static ip address is (hard coded but configurable via web interface) so that we don’t conflict with other poi. Also, once you are in Router mode, what if there is no router?

Right now, my poi check a web configurable EEProm switch on boot first, for Router mode on/off. If Router mode is on, the poi enter connect mode. If, after a certain amount of time, the router is not found, the poi restart in Access Point (master-slave-android) mode. However, upon rebooting again they revert back to Router check, so one has to manually set back to Access Point only mode if required.

I need a diagram here to really show what’s happening.

The problem came in if the router wasn’t configured correctly, or was simply not available, the poi needed a reliable way to get configured. My poi get configured by web interface (local network, no cloud) so AP mode was needed by default in case things went wrong.

Here is the note from my code:

//to activate in browser: http://192.168.1.78/router?router=1

//to deactivate: router=0

So I just type it in the browser on my connected Android or PC and the poi are set. I will assign this to a button on the app at some point.

Currently the only option for multi-poi is to send the same image to all poi simultaneously (only 3 pairs, that’s all I have). This looks great, but there is much more to do obviously. Just a matter of code

Time to go play a bit with the toys…

Simple D1 mini Circuit

Although the Smart Poi is based on ESP-01 for size reasons, I find it easier to use the excellent D1 mini for testing. Here is the basic setup:

Notice that the D1 mini is powered from a battery source (4 x NiMH AA in series). This is not entirely necessary, you could get away with plugging in the D1 mini via USB, and connecting the APA102 strip to the 5v pin. The problem comes in when the LED strip starts drawing too much power, you will have dropouts in Wifi connectivity, or wdt resets and won’t know if it’s the code or just power.

Use the offline code from my Github repo to get started:

SmartPoiOffline code

This code works fine on other Arduinos as well as ESP8266 chips. Just change the pins.

 

Smart Poi Emulators

Two emulators are featured here, the first takes all images in a folder and shows them in sequence, as they would look on the spinning poi:

 

The second program receives RGB values from serial connected poi chip and displays on screen. This is showing what is actually being sent out to the LED strip, useful for testing – I was getting a bit tired of spinning the poi whilst programming them and the Android transmitter app at the same time.

The image below is of the computer generated default offline patterns, but if wifi sent images are available it looks somewhat similar to the above. Colour is not yet optimized.

 

For the serial sending to work on the poi, a fairly large change in code is needed. The serial necessarily slows everything down drastically, so it’s for testing only.

What it’s really like to be a developer

The long road to Smart Poi, visualized:

In order to make this video I used a program called gource. It takes your Git commits and creates an infographic video automatically. I modified the programmer avatar using the –default-user-image setting.  If you want to see something spectacular, check out the linux kernel gource!