The Internet of Holiday Lights RoadTest Plus - Review

Table of contents

RoadTest: The Internet of Holiday Lights RoadTest Plus

Author: ipv1

Creation date: 24 Jan 2015

Evaluation Type: Independent Products

Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True

What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: Not that I can think of.

What were the biggest problems encountered?: Reviewing EVERYTHING!

Detailed Review:

The Roadtest Plus featured three boards:

1. The arduino YUN.

2. The Arduino UNO

3. Infineon RGB LED Shield.

We were challenged to create a project around these products and my proposal was a lighting solution for the living room that enabled the setup to be IoT enabled. The produced project has been documented with the following posts.

• [Dynamic Living-room Lights] Description
• [Dynamic Living-room Lights] Simple System Design
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The YUN review - When the Penguin Met The Arduino.
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The Infineon RGB LED Shield Review
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The Infineon RGB LED Shield -Library!
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The Lights Teaser Video
• [Dynamic Living-room Lights] The YUN talks to OpenHAB
• [Dynamic Living-room Lights] Building the Mood Lights
• [Dynamic Living Room Lights] The XMAS Tree
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] IoT Holiday Lights Minions
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The Big Picture - The Final Build
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] Paho For Python - Writing better code
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The Tree Code explained - Write a protocol with interrupts.
• [Dynamic Living-Room Lights] The project Summary and Demo Video

The final build looks something like the image shown below.

The Curtain Mood Lights on the right side of the Image use the INFINEON - KITLEDXMC1202AS01TOBO1 - RGB LED SHIELDINFINEON - KITLEDXMC1202AS01TOBO1 - RGB LED SHIELD and an ARDUINO - A000008 - ATMEGA32U4, YUN WIFI, EVALUATION BOARD.ARDUINO - A000008 - ATMEGA32U4, YUN WIFI, EVALUATION BOARD. The YUN receives commands over MQTT over the Local Network and also relays commands to the Arduino Nano/UNO which controls the 120 RGB LEDS on the Tree on the left side of the image. The communication happens via serial connection.

Reviews and Further work

Individual reviews of the Infineon Shield as well as the YUN are linked above and I also make a library for the Infineon Shield which is available on github.com/indepreet. I additionally did some experiments with the YUN and I will be extending this review in the future. I recently purchased a TP-LINK wr740n v4.28 for around 13USD which has the Atheros AR9331-AL3A (400Mhz CPU) which is the same as the one on the YUN and I hope to install OpenWRT on it which will make it the same distro as on the YUN for the cheap. The difference is that I will add my own Atmega328 on a seprate board. It will take a little hacking but I will get there.

I also have plans for the he Infineon RGB Shield to which I will add a DMX controller to free it from the YUN. The Infineon shield has lots of potential for correct reproduction of color and I alreay purchased some higher power RGB LEDs which I will test out IF my wife lets be take the board out of it's current assignment..

I cannot offer a single conclusion for this roadtest and instead let you be the judge of it. Watch the project video(in the blog post) and lemme know.

Thanks

IP