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Requesting help w/ RPi Project.

peter_ambos

New to RPi. I plan on building a lighting setup consisting of ~ 64 Panels, which I want to control via the RPi. Is there a way to do that with the limited amount of pins the RPi supplies?

  • in reply to guzunty

    also worthy of note is that there are kernel drivers for these that will allow you to make them look like any other supported GPIO and to control them via /sys/class/gpio/gpio<n>/value just like the onboard ones. 

    You probably need to recompile your kernel to do so though.

     

    There are also various gpio led drivers as well as ones that can handle some of the led pwm chips. 

     

    If there's a suitable driver available for the hardware you choose and your use case, it may be simpler to use it than to completely reinvent everything yourself.. Of course if you do that you don't learn quite so much in the process, but all depends on what you want to get out of the experience.

  • in reply to guzunty

    You may also want to consider how long your control wires will need to be.

    Depending on how far apart your panels are, it may be better to employ a

    communications or control technology (e.g., Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi-Fi) and

    build the power control into each of the panels (making them individually

    controllable).  The easiest way to do it is also the most expensive (buy

    pre-built Z-Wave modules and put a RaZberry board on the RPi).

     

    A more complicated, moderately less expensive method would be to use the

    RaZberry on the RPi and incorporate something like the ZM3102 (

    http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/ZM3102AU-CME1/703-1023-ND/1632504)

    in each of the panels. You'd still need to design the power control though.

     

    I'm currently loving Z-Wave technologies because you can poll the various

    nodes for their settings (i.e., you can tell if a light is on or off, or if

    it's set to a certain dim level).  Done properly, it can be incorporated

    into an existing home automation system.

     

    - Tim