Hacking Holiday lights! ~ #arduino with johnny-five and mini LED holiday lights
Arduino & Node.js Sensor / Security Hacking
So I’ve been prototyping an arduino device that serves as a monitor & access system for… restricted locations. I put together a list of things that I found necessary (or really helpful) in getting the project off the ground. Hopefully someone out there finds this useful in their endeavor to build something similar!
- Arduino UNO board
- Elenco 350 Piece Pre-formed Jumper Wire Kit
- Joe Knows Electronics 1/4W 86 Value 860 Piece Resistor Kit
- Helping Hands with Magnifying Glass
— absolutely invaluable, you’ll see
- BB400 Solderless Plug-in BreadBoard, 400 tie-points, 4 power rails
- Solder Sucker
- Weller SP23LK 25-Watt Soldering Iron
*
- Kester Pocket Pack Solder 60/40 0.031 0.50 oz. Tube
*
- microtivity 5mm Assorted Clear LED w/ Resistors (6 Colors, Pack of 60)
- LCD Module for Arduino 20 x 4, Black on Green
- Gino 5pcs 1x40 Pin 2.54 mm Angle Single Row Pin Header Strip
- Ultrasonic Module HC-SR04 Distance Sensor For Arduino
- 1m USB 2.0 A/B Cable (3.2ft)
— if you don’t have a spare
* I found slightly better options at a local Radio Shack (as unbelievable as that may sound)
I’ve also posted my source code (or ‘sketch’ in arduino-lingo) on GitHub @ nexxy/ultra-cinnamon.
Functionality
At the moment the project includes functionality that obtains baseline distance measurements from the ultrasonic sensor, and alerts the host device if anything gets between it and whatever it’s looking at. Basic smoothing of the sample distance is done to avoid false alarms due to slight variations in the readout. The sketch will also write basic prompts to an LCD screen (any HD44780-compatible controller). I haven’t yet included the functionality to actually capture and send barcodes to the host device, but this is a scheduled feature.
Future
Please contribute if this is something you find interesting. Ideally I would like to take a more modular approach with sensor readouts, but I am still re-learning C/C++ from long ago, so I am taking it slow to start with. Any assistance from interested parties in this regard would be greatly appreciated! It would be awesome to create a sort of multi-sensor device platform from this… There are bunches of potential applications (DIY physical security system, anyone?).
Integration
The other (host) component to this monitor project is a node.js process, (not yet open-sourced… (soon)) which I am running on a BeagleBoard. Serial communication on the Node.js side is done with voodootikigod/node-serialport (one of my favorite packages ever, by the way).
DISCLAIMER: Every last one of the links in the list above is an amazon affiliate link! Cool? Cool.
