Blog Archives

Luma Controller Development

The Luma Controller takes any audio input, calculates and analyzes a FFT of the spectrum, and sends commands out to a network of Luma nodes. This board duplicates the functionality of our music analysis software, but with greater flexibility and

Posted in MNL, Projects

Next-Generation Luma Nodes – Build Timelapse

The next iteration of the Luma node has been fabricated and assembled! The new node incorporates 3 10W RGBW LEDs, controlled with constant-current buck drivers and an ATTINY2313 microcontroller. Like all Luma nodes, up to 32 nodes can be daisy-chaned

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Posted in Announcements, MNL

Open Hardware USB to RS485 Adapter

While developing the Luma RS485-networked LED driver we discovered a need for a small and inexpensive USB to RS485 adapter. We designed an adapter with a FTDI basic UART chip (FT230XS) and an inexpensive TI differential receiver (SN75176). Our small

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Posted in MNL, Projects

Luma Node Development

Development has started on the next version of the Luma RS485 high-power RGB LED driver node. The new Luma node will include a constant-current buck LED driver, PCB-mount LED, temperature sensor, 16MHz crystal,  and many other new hardware features–all in

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Posted in MNL, Projects

MNL Updates

Luma Node Revision 3 Luma high-power RGB controller boards just got back from the fab, and we’ve populated and tested the first of the boards. The new boards include a 3-pin fan connector (power, ground, and tach) as well as

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Posted in AVR, MNL, Projects

MNL: Networked LED Lighting

MNL is a multi-node high-power RGB lighting system. It consists of a controller (PC or embedded system) and multiple light nodes networked with RS485. The first prototype nodes are up and running, and we will be developing the second revision

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Posted in AVR, MNL

tinyRGB – an i2c LED driver

tinyRGB is a minimalist blinkM-compatible high-current i2c RGB LED controller consisting of only 10 basic components. The board is small and inexpensive, can be fabricated for as little as $1/board, and can easily be assembled by hand with a total

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Posted in AVR, TinyRGB

The OSRAM SLG2016 and AVR

I happened to scavenge a couple of SLG2016’s from some old workstation debug displays. After finally locating a datasheet, I realized that they used the standard ASCII charset, so they are extremely easy to drive. Note: The SLG2016 differs from

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Posted in AVR