Wow! After more than two years I finally got my hands dirty hacking the Nabaztag rabbit. The release of the source code last summer were very encouraging here! Expect some awesome results in the next time

Let’s start with NabaztagInjector, an Arduino Library to inject data:

What bothered me for long was the missing possibility to connect external devices to the rabbit. How awesome would it be to use the rabbit for sending data into the net? Imagine it as WIFI shield you Arduino.

Guess what – that’s possible: replacing the RFID reader with an Arduino (both use the I2C bus) running a simulation of the RFID reader chip, enabled me to inject any custom data to the rabbit. Hacked!

As result, I created this tiny Arduino library to encapsulates the full process behind and easy API:

/**
 * Simple Arduino NabaztagInjector example sketch
 **/

#include <Nabaztag.h>

void setup() {
  Nabaztag.begin(0); //0 = standalone
}

void loop() {
  // send 1337 to the rabbit
  Nabaztag.inject(1337);
  //done
}

Check out the full Readme, Source code and Examples here:

http://www.rngtng.com/nabaztag-injector-arduino-rfid-hack/

UPDATE:
Please express your Love and vote for cubeXControl here – Thanks!

UPDATE2:
Apparently the current Version doesn’t work with Windows. I’m very sorry for that, but at the moment I don’t have any Win machine to test this. So please feel free to try yourself and fix it! Thx!

I’m proud to present a first version which was on my this years TODO list for so long, but due to all the changes therefore very less time never got startet. But thanks to the Seeedstudio Rainbowduino Carnival 2010 I got a big motivation boost and found some time to get my fingers dirty again. So check this out, my this years contribution for the carnival:

cubeXcontrol – a Rainbow Cube Editor

Well, you know the mtXcontrol, the Rainbowduino Editor and the awesome Seeedstudio Rainbow Cube I mentioned here ? Now it’s time  to bring them together:

Click here to view the embedded video.

cubeXcontrol is an editor to control and create patterns for the 4x4x4 RGB Rainbow Cube powered by a rainbowduino. It comes with an extra window showing a 3D model of the Cube, allowing to rotate in all directions and to zoom. Click on boxes to set the LED color easily.

The editor is of course heavily based on the latest mtXcontrol version, with the latest rainbowduino firmware. Both are unfortunately still in beta stage, but come with great new features like auto port detection.

Get the sources here:

https://github.com/rngtng/mtXcontrol/tree/cubeXcontrol

And the Rainbowduino driver:

https://github.com/rngtng/rainbowduino/tree/master_slave

Happy cub’ing!

Now, as I’m finally getting settled, it’s time to kick of mtXcontrol development again. So first, I’ll continue working on the raw rainbowduino interaction which is the firmware, a communication protocol and a processing library, all summerized in the Processing library -Rainbowduino-. Current development going on, here, check it out. It’s still in a beta state, but ready and good for testing.

Just to make you curious here some new cool upcoming features:
* support for multiple & cascading Rainbowduinos
* auto port detection
* plug and play
* (auto) firmware upload
* Rainbow Cube support
* updated, more robust protocol

The video above show a quick preview of the upcoming Rainbowduino Firmware release ‘Master and Slave’.

You see two Rainbowduinos, the left one as Master connected via Serial to Mac, the right one as Slave connected via I2C to master. The blinking LEDs are merely debug output, interesting part is the changing brightness of the slave. The command to change brightness is send via Serial, received by the master and forwarded to the slave via I2C. With that multiple rainbowudinos can be connected in a row easily.

And the Best: both run the same(!!!) firmware. The master/slave role and I2C address are auto detected on startup. As easy as that!

Stay tuned!!

Yay, I finally got my Rainbow Cube from Seeedstudio. It came in various parts which required happy soldering. Now, I can start experimenting and porting mtXcontrol to support Rainbow Cube as well – stay tuned!

But Rainbowduino support improved as well. I fixed lots of bugs and implemented requested features. Now you can control the display brightness, save up to 10 frames onto the device and serial port is auto detected. In general, I defined an basic API to communicate with the devices, which allows you to add more devices easily (e.g. monome!). With that, all Rainbowduino stuff is moved in a separate Rainbowduino Processing library.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See official mtXcontrol project page for more.

Thanks to everybody voting for my project!

Btw. I just released the latest version 1.02 with some bugfixes and new features in the API…

I know, the decision will be quite hard, as a lot of other cool projects were submitted as well. Like this cool Daft Punk Helmet or this nice lipsync speaking Robot…

Please check out the Raindrop Rainbowduino Game by my friend ccb23 as well. It’s a Rainbowduino connected via I2C to an Arduino with an Accelerometer. With that you can move the red dot on the Matrix and avoid hitting the falling blue raindrops. nice!

Make your vote!

My first tests went quite well. The Rainbowduino comes with a ready to use the program/sketch which allows you basic controls via I2C bus easily, like writing letters & lines in different color and light strength. But soon I hit the limits when it came so single control each LED to my will. So no doubt, I had to dig deeper in understanding how to control the Rainbowduino. Here a short summery of my results:

To understand how the Rainbowduino works, I kind of reverseengineered the sketch by seeedstudio which came with the controller. As usual for driving those Matrixes, PWM is used as basic concept. This means the frame image is created row by row by high frequency, so human eye puts it all together to one single image.

To simplify this process I created the Rainbowduino.h Library, which comes with some nice methods to set frames and draw those to the Rainbowduino. It’s part of the mtXcontrol firmware an can be downloaded from github

How it works:
To tell rainbowduino which row to draw the method ‘open_row’ is called. As each row is represented by a one output PIN, this method sets the according PIN to high, all others to low. Unfortunately the row pins are not all on one port: rows 1-3 are on PORTB Bit 1-3, rows 4-8 are on PORTD Bit 4-8. This makes the method kind of bit ugly

After the row is selected, its time to set the pixels. One pixel consists of 3 LEDs: red, green & blue. Each LED has to be separately to high or low to mix the final color (e.g. red + green is yellow). First all blue values of a row are set, then red and finally green. This happens in serial on PORTC. First bit is the value input, second bit is clock, bit 3 the write mode bit and bit 4 to display the shifted value. Call the method ‘draw_row’ to display a row. First parameter is the row number (0-7), second the intensity (1-16) and then the red, blue & green values for the row. e.g passing the color values 1,0,0 would light the first pixel red and all other off, where as 255, 255, 255 would light up all LED and all colors, to the full row would be white.

To store the row values the Library comes with a frame buffer for 10 frames. (That the amount of frames we can store to EEPROM without compression as well). You can pre fill the buffer and set the frame number to display. By calling draw() the frame of the current _frame number is drawn.

It makes sense to call this function by a timer interrupt to not disturb your actual program progress and to ensure it’s call in regular frequency to avoid different display colors.

To set up the timer, include this in your code:

Rainbowduino rainbow = Rainbowduino(10);  //max 10 Frames

void setup_timer() {
  TCCR2A = 0;
  TCCR2B = 1<<CS22 | 0 <<CS21 | 0<<CS20;
  TIMSK2 = 1<<TOIE2;
  TCNT2 = 0;
  sei();
}

ISR(TIMER2_OVF_vect) {
  rainbow.draw();
}

Now, just fill you frames with

rainbow.set_frame(0, *data);

and your’re ready to go. Have fun!

First tests of the library with earlier version of mtXcontrol, an Editor to create images on the Matrix easily:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stay tuned for more examples soon…

Click here to view the embedded video.

More on this here: http://www.squidsoup.org/stealth/

[via nejo0017.wordpress.com]

Feel free to grab it here: Earthshine Design Arduino Starters Kit Manual .

It covers several experiements you’ll start your Arduino career with, especially you’ve bought thier very complete starter kit. Go for it!

[found via freeduino.de]