Climbing is a cool sport. With that said, like everything, it’s even better if you integrate lots of glowing colorful LEDs. To that end, [Superbender] worked up this fun climbing wall that features interactive lighting built right in.
Structurally, there’s nothing too wild going on here. It’s a wood-framed climbing structure that stands 10 meters long and 2.5 meters high, and can be covered in lots of climbing holds. It’s the electronic side of things where it gets fun. An Arduino Due is installed to run the show, hooked up with a small TFT display and some buttons for control. It’s then hooked up to control a whole bunch of LEDs and some buttons which are scattered all across the wall. It’s also paired with an Arduino Nano which runs sound feedback, and a 433 MHz remote for controlling the system at a distance.
[Superbender] uses the lighting for fun interactive games. One example is called Hot Lava, where after each climbing pass, more holds are forbidden until you can’t make the run anymore. Chase the Blues is another fun game, where you have to climb towards a given hold, at which point it moves and you have to scamper to the next one.
We’ve featured similar projects before from other inventive climbers. Video after the break.
So reading this made me think: we’ve made LEDs where we can control a string of them using just a single data line. Why don’t we do something similar with switches? That is, add just a little bit of logic such that you can interface a whole string of switches with just a GPIO or 2. The logic can just indicate info such as whether the switch is currently depressed, and whether it was depressed or released since the last poll. That should be enough info to not only indicate momentary presses, but also long pushes.
Lots of pushbuttons already have 4 contacts (with 2 being redundant). How about making them with data-in, data-out, power, and ground?
Or has someone already done this and I just didn’t know about it?
I think the 1-wire protocol will do what you suggest. A quick look on Google suggests that the DS2413 chip should do what you want. I’ve never used the 1-wire protocol for anything, so take what I say with a tiny pinch of salt
I can’t think of any reason it couldn’t be done, likely there just hasn’t been enough of a need for it for companies to make one, unlike with addressable LEDs. Most times when a lot of switches are needed a switch matrix is used. Similar things can work with LEDs but they have significant downsides, hence they made addressable LEDs.
Sounds like an application for one of the 6 pin microcontrollers.
There’s more applications where you need many leds in odd places then those where you need many switches in odd places. You usually just don’t need that many switches.
Inspires me.
Lets drill a grid of holes in Half Dome, install solar powered addressable LEDs and sell advertising.