As an introduction to The Light hardware, here is some of the information I’ll be covering over the next couple of weeks in blog posts. These will describe the prototype Light, how it was assembled, how it works, and how you can assemble a similar device yourself.
- About LPD8806 based RGB LED strips
- Physical layout and wiring of the LED strips
- Power considerations
- The Olimex OLinuXino Micro & Maxi, Raspberry Pi, and hardware modifications
- Getting your (micro)SD card boot image ready
- Implementing fast software SPI
- Testing your Light
- Adding an I2C based accelerometer
- Implementing battery power
A lot of effort is currently under way to streamline the design so that it can be built cheaply and reliably in large quantities. Although this means that our final schematic and PCB layouts are not yet ready to share, the information we share in these posts will be enough for you to create your own compatible Light from off the shelf hardware. Although it will be a time consuming process, it can be quite rewarding and a good learning exercise.