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!!

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!

So check out this Demo:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out it’s new project page with details, video and sources to download:
http://www.rngtng.com/mtXcontrol

The first real basic problem I ran into was how to program the Rainbowduino as there’s no USB connector and I don’t have an UART interface.
But well, nothing simpler than that: Just connect your Arduino’s Tx,Rx,GND,Reset and Vcc ports with those of the Rainbowduino, choose the right controller type in your IDE and program it as usual – works perfect for me!

Check out my Rainbowduino Editor mtXcontrol here – it’s an easy way to draw shapes on your rainbowduino!

Btw. DTR on Rainbowduino is Reset on Arduino

UPDATE:
Sorry I forgot to mention, this trick does NOT work if your host arduino is a ATmega168 – you need an ATmega328 to pass serial communication through. Before that, make sure you upload this blank sketch to your host Arduino first:

/* blank sketch to upload on Arduino */
void setup()
{
}

void loop()
{
}

And, as multiple times requested, a picture of my complete setup:

Make sure you’ve selected the switch right. It has to point to the same side as the green Terminal connectors are. If you power rainbowduino through the white JST jack, flip it!