ILAMtitan

Came home to a new package at my apartment today. I was expecting some screws for another project I'm working on, but was surprised by a much bigger box. Inside was a surprising new alarm clock, which is actually a lot cooler than it sounds! Really jazzes up my workbench. I decided that Vader needed to hop on his ride. Just kidding, he's joined me in at his right full place by my side, on my nightstand. We'll see how long he stays intact before his power is extended. Thanks Cubeberg!

@@RobG, that looks great! I'm absolutely picking up a kit for my cube here at TI.

It sure does perform as advertised. The new MSP430i20xx family is initially targeted for low cost embedded e-metering applications, and other industrial markets where high precision analog is a must. We already have a few TIDesigns posted regarding its usage: http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDM-SERVER-PWR-MON and http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDC-SMARTPLUG-WIFI In e-meter applications you must sample the voltage and current signals simultaneous, or else you will inject an artificial phase delay that has to be compensated in software. To accomplish this, all of our meteorology devices have multiple d

That shouldn't be a problem. Our next meeting is Tuesday, so I'll make sure to bring my good camera and get some shots of the team.

I've tossed around the idea of making an e-meter booster pack, but the Launchpads just don't have the proper analog to do the TI energy metering solutions justice. We did just release a new TIDesign for a branch cirucit monitor that can measure up to 7 current channels: http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDA-00222 That might be a decent starting point if you want to make one of these yourself. Hopefully it goes without saying though, mains voltage is super dangerous, and make sure you play it safe.

My apartment complex sent me a message that I had a new package delivery! Thanks USPS!! Luckily everything inside was intact. 30 RocketBadges from @@cubeberg! I'll be using these to teach some high school kids where I volunteer as a robotics mentor how to solder. Hopefully I'll be back later with photos from the lessons.

Ya, I just looked up the WS2811 lib on the Stellaristi forum, and it's SPI based. Someone with more experience would have to make a new one for the CC3200 since the devices don't share a serial coms peripheral. It would be really cool to have WiFi controlled LED strips though. I might just have to get a CC3200LP and start working on this anyway.

@@MORA99 - This lib is very MSP430 asm dependent. The CC3200 uses an M4, so there is no chance of a direct port. You might have some luck looking into a Tiva WS2811 library since it's the same core, but I doubt it would be a simple port. Once I get my hands on a CC3200 LP I'll probably try to make a compatible WS2811 library for it, or expand this one to work with it as well.

That looks awesome. I would love to hang one in my cube here at work. (I already have a nixie clock at home) Something that you might consider is adding some blue led back lights to the tubes. I built one for my brother that had them and they look really slick.

So, a few tests later, and I have a few things to report if anyone is going to try and make these. 1. The mechanical connections are critical. I wore them for a day, and by the end the LED strips were rather flaky. I need to go in an resolder some connections now. 2. The LED strips don't like the flex. One of them has a break in the DIO line that I had to track down and rebridge. 3. NiMh batteries are far superior to alkaline. Three Alkalines will dip below the dropout voltage of the LDO at around 60-70% life, while NIMhs will stay strong will close to 90%, with a bit extra capacity.

As I teased a little bit in another post, here's my latest project: GrownUp LA Gears! For those of us who were growing up in the mid 90s, LA Gears were the best thing you could strap to your feet. They had LEDs in the heal that would flash when you walked. I wasn't lucky enough to have a pair when I was a kid, so maybe this whole thing is just me living out a lost childhood fantasy..... Much like the WS2811 driver library this project is being used to demo, I also snagged the idea from AdaFruit: https://learn.adafruit.com/firewalker-led-sneakers/overview I recommend reading through

I'm just standing on the shoulders of giant's here. There sadly aren't many photos of the shoes during the build process so far, but I'll probably still do a project post about them when they are done.

Hey guys, I haven't been around much lately, but a recent project brought me back here and using this WS2811 library. I'm trying to enable more people to use the LaunchPad in some of my volunteer work (FIRST robotics) and flashing LEDs is a good eye catching way to do it. To help facilitate people who are already using Arduino and the venerable AdaFruit NeoPixels, I ported over almost all of her functionality to work in Energia. https://github.com/ILAMtitan/WS2811Driver With this, any project using the NeoPixel library will be near 100% compatible. I also took some time and worke

I was able to extract the cover from Garrett's STL file and extend it a bit to fit the TRF-7970 NFC BoosterPack. I added 6mm to it as you can see here: It should be able to fit with many other Boosters as well, but I haven't really tested it out. It sits only a few mm off of the Booster PCB so that the NFC tag is close to it. And here's the file for you guys to play with. 7970_5529Top.zip

I'm very interested in getting the STLs. We just got a 3D printer in the MSP430 lab!