Blinky

The idea of Blinky is stolen from a website, so I used the same name for this project. As the new firmware for Blinky is not available at that site, I decided to create a completely new one, useing a smaller microcontroller and adding a few features. It consists of 16 red and yellow 10mm LEDs that are placed in an alternating pattern to form a 4x4 pixel matrix. They can be lit in 16 different brightness values. The desired operating mode can be choosen with 2 keys that can be pressed either short or long. In addition, there is an RS232 port to receive streams from a PC and an 1Hz clock source (taken from the clockwork of an "analog" clock).

Features/Modes

• Play "hard-coded" animations (left button, short press)
  • Several commands for animations: SET, FADE, LOOP, LOOPEND, WAIT
  • about half the flash (1024 Bytes) is available for animations

• Play a stream received via RS232 (left button, long press)
  • MCUF protocol
  • 19200 Baud (8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity)
  • frame size must be 4x4
  • maxval must be either 0x0F or 0xFF (0xFF values are internally shifted right 4 places)
  • internal timeout if nothing is received within some milliseconds (prevents becoming out of sync)

• Show a BCD clock (right button, short press)
  • vertical "digits"
  • 24 hours clock
  • 1HZ clock source on the back of the circuit board

• Set the clock (right button, long press)
  • each "digit" is set independantly
  • left button = set, right button = next digit
  • the internal second couter is only reset when the "set"-button is pressed during setting the minute 1's
  • 0000 is displayed as 1111 in this mode to see which digit is being set (blinking)

Schematic/Firmware

• Schematic (PNG)
• Schematic (Eagle)

• Firmware v0.5 (ZIP)
• Firmware v0.6 (ZIP), 22C3 version (2 new animations, no code changes)
• Firmware v0.7 (ZIP), including code for BlinkyLamps

Photos

	This arrow is displayed in stream mode until the first valid frame is received	The time is 01:53

-- ArneRossius - 20 Oct 2005