Addressable RGB LED project

Question

Hello, I am relatively new to this community, and I am working on my first project ever.

I have an idea of what I would like and how it works, but if you see a better way of doing this please tell me.

I would like to build a custom computer case with Addressable RGB LED strips. I would like the lights in the case to shine different colors depending on who is signed in and have different patterns with the different status of the computer.

For example, if no one is signed in the lights would show a default color... Let's say blue. And when someone signs in the lights would fade to that persons color automatically. Also when the computer is in standby or sleep it will slowly pulse the users color.

I Have a pretty good idea of that I need for this project, but please correct me if you know of a better option.

The parts I'm looking at are;

Arduino Uno R3-Arduino Uno R3 (Atmega328 - assembled) ID: 50 - $29.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
9v power supply for the Arduino-http://adafruit.com/products/63
Addressable RGB LED strips-http://www.adafruit.com/products/306

The first step in this system, I think, would be to creat a program that would run on startup and check who is signed in. And would later recognize when the computer goes into standby/sleep mode. I don't know if this is possible, so any pointers would help (btw i'm using Windows 7)

Then this program would find the users settings and send a command to the Arduino telling it what color and pattern to display. I hope to connect the Arduino via USB to my computer.

The Arduino will be plugged into the power supply mentioned above, and connected to the LED strip mentioned above.

I read up on the Arduino uno, and found that it is able to output +5v Which I am hoping to use for the LED strip. Also the ground,data in, and clock in wires from the LED strip will also be connected to the Arduino via their respective connections. Would this supply enough power for the lights?

PLEASE NOTE that this is in no way a final plan and can be changed easily seeing that I have no commitments at the moment. Like I mentioned earlier I am new to this type of stuff so I have no equipment. Any basic advice would be greatly appreciated.

So what do you think? Is this plan feasible? Are there any ways this could be done cheaper? And what language would I need to know to write these programs mentioned above (I'm thinking C, but I'm not sure)?

Thanks again, and sorry for such a long post.

ckraft · Accepted Answer

Interesting idea. A few things come to mind. The 5v output of the Arduino will not have enough power to drive the LED strip. If you check the Adafruit site you will see they call that out in the product details and also the tutorial. As far as the software on the PC to send info to the Arduino there is no need to write it in C. You could use the free version of Visual Studio to write something in C# that will talk to the Arduino via the serial port. That is how I did the code for the tweeting heart episode You could also write it in Python if you wanted I imagine there are examples of how to do what you want to do floating around the net. If you did some googling I wouldn't be surprised if you found something very close to what your trying to make.

ckraft · Answer

You can power the Arduino off the USB port and also talk to it. You don't need a motherboard with a serial port. I should have made that clear. When you plug the Arduino into the USB port the drivers make it appear as a serial port. This allows you to use standard serial libraries to talk to the Arduino. That is how I wrote the code for the tweeting heart episode. I wrote a C# program that used built in serial libraries to talk to the Arduino.

Former Member · Answer

If you need independently-controllable LED RGB values, you can always use an I2C connection from an Arduino to something like the BlinkM (pricey) or "ghetto" version of the BlinkM you can build from AtTiny chips for a few bucks each ( Ghetto Pixels - Building an open source BlinkM ). I use those and a Raspberry Pi to illuminate the display of grid-computing projects aligned with individual CPU cores (small program reads the BOINC project settings for the World Computing Grid and contacts the RasPi website to aggregate CPUs across multiple distributed systems). Pretty simple setup and build for the pixels and config using I2C is a quick solution. Kirk

Addressable RGB LED project

Top Replies