This is a funky looking visual status indicator I made for work:
It has a hemispherical base with 5 stalks ending in cups into which I glued ping-pong balls. In each ping pong ball is an 8mm addressable through-hole LED. Wires run down the stalks to a small ATMega32u4 dev board.
The idea is that you plug it into your computer's USB port and set it at the top of a cube wall. It lets others around you know if you're there, away, busy, etc.
The original version was used on a Linux computer, and I added code to Pidgin to change the LED states based on my Skype for Business status. Now, my work computer is Windows (ugh), and I have to get admin approval to get access to the API for MS Teams - so now I have a separate Windows program where I manually change the LED states. Progress (nope).
The components:
This is the AVR code in the dev board. I don't use Arduino, so this is c++ code compiled and flashed into the chip. It is a pretty basic project that I've pulled some external stuff into. In the directories:
- (root) - has main, a common header, and some basic classes.
btBootycallis a OSX application that is used to call the AVR into bootloadersys- code to set up the hardware and the fusesusb- copied and modified from Atmel's application notes on writing a USB HID devicews2812- a library for ws2812 protocol LEDs
There's a Makefile for linux and mac. A Windows makefile is left as an exercise for the reader.
This is the OpenSCAD model for the physical device. Pretty self-explanatory.
This is an open-source HID library that I used to make a test app to talk to the beacon for development
Documentation on the dev board