Fireflies
A Networked Nightlight
by John Schimmel
schimmel@nyu.edu
Fireflies A Networked Nightlight | |
This work is licensed under
a Creative Commons
License.
The Story
The summer nights as a kid I would run around my backyard and catch fireflies, held lightly in my fist I would feel them walking and tickling the inside of my hand. We would collect a few in containers and take them inside the house where they would sleepover with us. Tapping on the containers at night would stimulate the fireflies to light up. In the morning we eventually remembered them and put them back in the grass in the morning.
Theconcept
Fireflies are networked nightlights for a
local environment, the jars can be placed in different bedrooms or other spots around a home so
people can communicate with one another through simply tapping on the jars. For example, if
you tap the jar in your bedroom you will pulse the colored fireflies associated with that jar.
The neighboring jars in your home will receive and pulse your taps, record them and then play
them back. The neighboring jars can respond with their own tapping and broadcast themselves to
the nightlights in the home.
While a person is tapping the jar, they are in a broadcast
mode where they get approximately 4 seconds of tap time and the other jars are in listening mode,
again, for approximately 4 seconds *. After the 4 seconds is up there all the jars play back the
recorded taps they have received. It's a firefly jam session.
Fireflies work using radio
frequency (RF) which broadcasts only when a jar is being tapped. The RF works nice in a home
because it does not need to rely on an existing network infrastructure, a jar simply sends as
far as it can for each tap, usually 400 feet, and any jar in that radius will most likely
receive the message.
The nightlights work well even without their friends, as a standalone, the jar has enough character to create a presence that does not need to react or broadcast to others and can simple be a piece of a room.
* 4 seconds of tap and listening time was a time I felt comfortable giving a user and has nothing to do with programming or hardware issues.
Thecircuit
Designing the circuit I had one constraint with the size of the jars that I selected. The mouth of the jars are small and even the smallest breadboard would not fit inside, perf boards were the next option.
The circuit will work like this.
Perf board layout (version 2)
| The wire connector, voltage regulator, IC socket and crystal are soldered to the board. The RF transceiver will be placed on the right side of the board.
|
Top of finished board
| Bottom of board
|
Soldering down the digital pot and Qprox.
| Under the digital pot and qprox.
|
The finished boards will be sandwiched together with spacers and placed in the bottom of the mason jars. The perf boards are good for sending projects out into the world and not worrying about wires coming loose. Some tips I would give for future perf board builders: - Use your breadboard as an example, don't take it apart. - Layout your perf board first visualize how the wires will connect. - Connect your voltage regulator first and test voltage before connecting any other ICs. -Solder ICs one at a time and test them. |  |
Shopping List:
- 3 16LF819 Pics (www.microchip.com)
- 3 QProx QT113 touch
sensors
(www.digikey.com)
- 3 2.4 Ghz transceivers (www.sparkfun.com)
- 18 superbright LEDs
(www.superbrightleds.com)
- 3 old mason jars from eBay
Some code examples
This work is licensed under
a Creative Commons
License.
