moonboard

This project contain software (written in python) and informations to build a led system for the MOONBOARD using a raspberrypi with integrated Bluetooth.

Original led box

The moonboard smartphone app is build to work with the moonboard led box togheter (via BLE) for displaying the problems.

In this project we emulate the behaviour of the box. More details in the ble folder.

LED stripes

The led used are addressable LED stripes. There are many type of them: ws281x, ws2801, apa102,...

I use WS2801(4 wires with clock line) led, buyed on Aliexpress. There are plenty of suppliers. For the Mooonboard a led spacing of at last 20cm is necessary. I asked the supplier to produce the led with a custom lenght of 23 cm. I get the leds for about 25$/50pcs.

You will also need a powersupply to power the leds The led are wired directly to the raspberry without level shifting.

The led are driven by a raspberry using the SPI interface and the bibliopixel python library.

Hardware used

raspberry pi 3B+.
200 ws2801 LED
power supply meanwell mdr-60-5

Software

linux os, python > 3.6 (see requirements.txt), bluez

BLE process

The BLE of the raspberry is setup to act as the moonboard led box. When a problem is sent from the app to the raspberry a signal containing the problems holds is send on the dbus. More details in the ble folder.

Led driving process

This process listen on the dbus for new problem signals and display the problem on the strips when new problems are available. This part is implemented on the script run.py.

To have the script running at startup a systemd service has to be started. See scripts/run.sh and services/moonbard.service.

OLD, TODO, ...

moonboard backend service: backend service to the moonboard app. Add services/moonboard.service.
nginx service: Webserver serving the moonboard app. See next section.
optional, app client service: you can access moonboard app using the rpi browser. To automate it at startup. Add services/kiosk_browser.service.

To Add and start a service see services/install_service.sh

Install and setup nginx

See Deploy your React & .NET Core Apps on Linux using Nginx and Supervisor

install nginx sudo apt install nginx.

configure nginx:

open file sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

append content

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;
    # Some comments...
    root /var/www/html;  # STATIC FILE LOCATION
    # Some comments...
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
    server_name _;
    location / {
            # Some comments...
            try_files $uri /index.html;   # ADD THIS
    }
    # Some comments...
}

copy react app folder /buils to /var/www/html
restart nginx server sudo systemctl restart nginx.service. See scripts/move_build.sh script.

cuhland/moonboard