Neat Ring Clock Relies On Addressable LEDs

January 16, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

[WhiskeyTangoHotel] wanted to build an LED clock after seeing some great designs online. They elected to go after a ring clock design, based around the ever-popular WS2812B addressable LEDs.

The core of the build is the HELTEC WiFi 32 development board. It’s not one we’re intimately familiar with, but it’s based around the popular Expressif ESP32. Since it’s got WiFi, it’s able to simply dial up a network time server to always keep accurate time. It then drives a set of WS2812B LEDs set up in six rings. They display the current time with a layout akin to that of a typical analog clock.

What makes this build just a little more fun is the inclusion of Disco Mode. At the press of a button, the full set of LEDs flashes out some fun dancing patterns. The clock is also programmed to trigger the same display for sixty seconds at the top of each hour.

It’s a straightforward build—what might have been highly complicated to build two decades ago has been simplified with the magic of addressable LEDs. What’s also cool is that this clock was apparently inspired by another project shared on these very pages. If you’ve been spurred to build something cool yourself, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!

Turning GLaDOS Into Ted: A Tale Of A Talking Toy

January 14, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 7 Comments

What if your old, neglected toys could come to life — with a bit of sass? That’s exactly what [Binh] achieved when he transformed his sister’s worn-out teddy bear into ‘Ted’, an interactive talking plush with a personality of its own. This project, which combines the GLaDOS Personality Core project from the Portal series with clever microcontroller tinkering, brings a whole new personality to a childhood favorite.

[Binh] started with the basics: a teddy bear already equipped with buttons and speakers, which he overhauled with an ESP32 microcontroller. The bear’s personality originated from GLaDOS, but was rewritten by [Binh] to fit a cheeky, teddy-bear tone. With a few tweaks in the Python-based fork, [Binh] created threads to handle touch-based interaction. For example, the ESP32 detects where the bear is touched and sends this input to a modified neural network, which then generates a response. The bear can, for instance, call you out for holding his paw for too long or sarcastically plead for mercy. I hear you say ‘but that bear Ted could do a lot more!’ Well — maybe, all this is just what an innocent bear with a personality should be capable of.

Instead, let us imagine future iterations featuring capacitive touch sensors or accelerometers to detect movement. The project is simple, but showcases the potential for intelligent plush toys. It might raise some questions, too.

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Using Audio Hardware To Drive Neopixels Super Fast

January 13, 2025 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Here’s the thing about running large strings of Neopixels—also known as WS2812 addressable LEDs. You need to truck out a ton of data, and fast. There are a dozen different libraries out there to drive them already, but [Zorxx] decided to strike out with a new technique—using I2S hardware to get the job done.

Microcontrollers traditionally use I2S interfaces to output digital audio. However, I2s also just happens to be perfect for driving tons of addressable LEDs. At the lowest level, I2S hardware is really just flipping a serial data line really fast with a clock line and a word select line for good measure. If, instead of sound, you pipe a data stream for addressable LEDs to the I2S hardware, it will clock that data out just the same!

[Zorxx] figured that at with an ESP32 trucking out I2S data at a rate of 2.6 megabits per second on the ESP32, it would be possible to update a string of 256 pixels in just 7.3 milliseconds. In other words, you could have a 16 by 16 grid updating at over 130 frames per second. Step up to 512 LEDs, and you can still run at almost 70 fps.

There’s some tricks to pulling this off, but it’s nothing you can’t figure out just by looking at the spec sheets for the WS2812B and the ESP32. Or, indeed, [Zorxx’s] helpful Github page. We’ve featured some other unorthodox methods of driving these LEDs before, too! Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own ideas on how to datablast at ever greater speeds, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Gaming Table Has Lights, Action

January 12, 2025 by Al Williams 2 Comments

We couldn’t decide if [‘s] Dungeons and Dragons gaming table was a woodworking project with some electronics or an electronics project with some woodworking. Either way, it looks like a lot of fun.

Some of the features are just for atmosphere. For example, the game master can set mood lighting. Presets can have a particular light configuration for, say, the woods or a cave.

But the table can also be a game changer since the game runner can send private messages to one or more players. Imagine a message saying, “You feel strange and suddenly attack your own team without any warning.”

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Tactility; The ESP32 Gets Another OS

January 11, 2025 by Jenny List 11 Comments

Doing the rounds this week is a new operating system for ESP32 microcontrollers, it’s called Tactility, and it comes from [Ken Van Hoeylandt]. It provides a basic operating system level with the ability to run apps from an SD card, and it has the choice of a headless version or an LVGL-based touch UI.

Supported devices so far are some Lillygo and M5Stack boards, with intriguingly, support in the works for the Cheap Yellow Display board that’s caught some attention recently. The term “ESP32” is now a wide one encompassing Tensilica and RISC-V cores and a range of capabilities, so time will tell how flexible it is for all branches of the family.

We find this OS to be interesting, both in its own right and because it joins at least two others trying to do the same thing. There’s [Sprite_TM]’s PocketSprite mini console, and the operating system used by the series of Netherlands hacker camp badges, We’ll be trying to get a device running it, in order to give you a look at whether it’s suitable for your projects. If it runs well on the cheaper hardware, it could be a winner!

Bit-Banging The USB-PD Protocol

January 10, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

For one-off projects, adding a few integrated circuits to a PCB is not too big of a deal. The price of transistors is extremely low thanks to Moore and his laws, so we’re fairly free to throw chips around like peanuts. But for extremely space-constrained projects, huge production runs, or for engineering challenges, every bit of PCB real estate counts. [g3gg0] falls into the latter group, and this project aims to remove the dedicated USB-PD module from a lighting project and instead bit-bang the protocol with the ESP32 already on the board.

The modern USB power delivery (PD) protocol isn’t quite as simple as older USB ports that simply present a 5V source to whatever plugs itself into the port. But with the added complexity we get a lot more capability including different voltages and greater power handling capabilities. The first step with the PD protocol is to communicate with a power source, which requires a 1.2V 600kHz signal. Just generating the signal is challenging enough, but the data encoding for USB requires level changes to encode bits rather than voltage levels directly. With that handled, the program can then move on to encoding packets and sending them out over the bus.

After everything is said and done, [g3gg0] has a piece of software that lets the ESP32 request voltages from a power supply, sniff and log PD communication, and inject commands with vendor defined messages (VDM), all without needing to use something like a CH224K chip which would normally offload the USB-PD tasks. For anyone looking to save PCB space for whatever reason, this could be a valuable starting point. To see some more capabilities of the protocol, check out this USB-PD power supply that can deliver 2 kW.

More Things To Do With Your Cheap Yellow Display

January 7, 2025 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

The Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is an ESP32 development board that’s been making the rounds for a while now, thanks to its value and versatility. For around $10 USD, you get a nicely integrated package that’s perfect for a wide array of projects and applications. Toss a couple in on your next AliExpress order, and all you need to do is come up with an idea. [Craig Lindley] had two ideas, and maybe they will help get those gears turning in your head. Even if you don’t need a network-connected MP3 player or GPS information display, we bet browsing the source code would be useful.

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