IoT Mood Cube

I put together a “mood cube” with several BlinkMs (smart rgb led) on a wiz811MJ (ethernet) equipped Rhino. Thanks to some really nice code from Nicolas3 and jasdev, this beautiful blinky hosts its own web server. The cube is translucent stained glass sitting on top of a modified poplar wooden tissue box. The cube is going to make its public debut on Adafruit’s show and tell tonight. For a brief time, I’m going to let folks change the color to whatever they want. If you want a better idea of what it’s all about, that show gets posted to youtube on their channel.

Here’s the (very basic) page for changing colors and running preconfigured color scripts.

No video? :slight_smile:

Better than video! A live stream where you can change the color! I’ll open up a port and let folks here beat on it to see how well the code handles “a lot” of actual requests. Stay tuned…

Looking forward to seeing this!

Alrighty, she’s live. Access instructions at http://www.ransomhall.com/Pages/MoodCube.aspx

Please post here if you have any troubles with the stream or the cube. Your helping me beta test the device.

I have had two failed “post” changes to 255 Red fade 5. Got to the web form OK first, but then got no response. Perhaps this is multiple people attempting to access it.

You should also stop access to the device/network/settings page even though you have nothing in them (yes, I know the codebase so I guessed the URLs :))

Had a few good changes, perhaps you need a way to give feedback that the command was submitted? Then delay for a couple of seconds before you commence to change it?

do you queue commands issued in a sequence? So if I make two changes and you make a change in the middle it does them all?

The other thing I would try is to change the speed at which the transition occurs - a fade of 1 seems to be not a very large time !

@ ransomhall - Very cool, and fun to play with.
The enclosure looks really nice. Did you make the wooden box yourself?
Initially I viewed the live video with the default settings, and the clarity wasn’t that good, but then I changed the Quality setting to 50% and it improved dramatically.

@ brett - thanks for the rapid response. is it morning in the Outback?

The current page is definitely a hack. I have a presentation on Tuesday with it, so was under the gun this weekend to get it working. The UI will be geting an upgrade for sure when I have a bit more time.

@ jasdev - the video app is yawcam (freeware) and defaults to 30% on quality to save on bandwidth. That default setting is not configurable. Fortunately, I have 20 meg fiber to the home, both up and down, so bandwidth is no problem (so far).

I did not do the box, and found a guy in Tennessee (no, not ianlee) who sells tissue boxes on etsy.com. They are really well made and reasonably priced. I couldn’t come close to that quality even if I had a woodshop full of the right machinery. He will do custom sizes in various hardwoods. We’re big on maple up here in Vermont, so I’m going to have him do a few in that until I have time to find a local woodworker and raw material source. Fairly soon, you may see a few of these also pop up on etsy 8)

Very nicely done.

@ Gus - thanks.

There’s a new Maker group in town, http://vermontmakers.org and I’m involved at the executive level :slight_smile: The group was formed with a decidedly artistic flavor, so you will probably see my future projects influenced by the artists in the group. Actually enclosing a board in somethin’ perty! What a concept!

Our first meeting was part of a visit from Casey Raes of Processing fame. The timing was coincidental, and couldn’t have been a better way to draw a crowd. He has an exhibition locally through April, http://www.burlingtoncityarts.org/BCACenter/Exhibition.aspx?id=5334 . Very nice!

Yep, Monday morning here thanks to that International Date Line thingo :slight_smile:

Exciting.

It is nice! :slight_smile:

What happens if two people tried to access the cube? Maybe you need to send a message id the cube is being used by other people?

ransomhall you are so funny! :slight_smile: I am watching your live streaming. :smiley:

@ joe - yah, i need to get those station messages on some kind of automatic servo… ha!

right now, it’s “just a webpage”, so I’m not sure what would happen if a whole bunch of requests came in simultaneously. I want folks to beat on it, to see what happens. So far it’s only needed one reset this evening.

Your stream works on iPhone. Didn’t expect that.

@ gus - Yawcam is one of the better freeware video tools. I tested on a kindle fire and it worked. I didn’t expect that, either. Because the web pages are super simple html, they work on everything I’ve thrown at 'em. The fire, Android phone (2.3.4), and a friend’s mac. The last one was really a surprise :smiley:

Very cool. Much better quality streaming than some of the other attempts I’ve seen. Gotta love the monkey too! I was surprised that 0,0,0 actually turned it off :slight_smile: Didn’t take long before someone else turned it back on though. Does it stay on one setting until it’s changed again or just for some predetermined time then moves on to something else?