Arduino Orb Build Warden

An Arduino based Ambient Orb designed explicitly for monitoring Source Code Autobuild systems. This orb can easy be repurposed for monitoring really anything that can have alerts from time to time.

Step 1 Purpose

Some time ago a co-worker passed me an article about "Extreme Feedback" devices that could be attached to your autobuild system with the express intent of making it very visible that the build is broken, and potentially being irritating enough to help motivate people towards fixing the broken build. Since reading this article I have been somewhat consumed with the concept of creating one of these devices for my team. Keeping builds clean is hard, and without a constant reminder, it can be very easy for people to let the build stay broken for long periods of time. This essentially defeats the purpose of doing autobuilds, and potentially even unit testing.

I Looked into the Ambient Orb, but I have to admit, I wasn't particularly thrilled with the fact that it has a monthly subscription, and you can't talk directly to it with your computer. So I started to teach myself electronics in the hope that I would be able to build one of these devices on my own. After a month or so, I ran into the Arduino platform, which struck me as the perfect platform for building an orb from scratch. This is the end result of my project is this, The Arduino Orb Build Warden.

Comments

[burkelashell]

Very nicely done. It served as inspiration for my own orb.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Orb-controlled-via-serial-port/

[L34h]

Hi there, I'd just like to point out that the 3rd soldering image has a misprint - the leads should be soldered on red, green and blue: not red, red, blue. Just wanted to be helpful for anyone who's using the images as a soldering guide.

[xrob]

Hey, great Instructable! I used it to build an orb to monitor the health of various processes at work as well. I made a few changes that others might find interesting:

Rather than use 9 LEDs, I picked up 2 'full color' RGB LEDs from Radio Shack:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3020765 They combine red, green, and blue LEDs in a single package, they're very bright, and have a great viewing angle, so you don't need a diffuser. They have a common anode, so you run that pin (the long one) to the Arduino's 5V pin rather than ground. I used 100 ohm resistors to hook up each of the other three pins to the PWM pins. You then have to invert the value that the PWM pins are set to: analogWrite(redPin,0) now turns the red to full brightness, and analogWrite(redPin,255) turns it off. (I changed the code to do this automatically.) A lot less wiring, and the three colors are pretty well balanced: mine produces a pretty good white.

Since each color of the 3-color LED can draw 30-50mA, and the Arduino PWM pins can only source 40mA, to hook up the second LED (for extra brightness), I used the 3 other PWM pins (3,5,6) to drive it (and modified the software to handle this).

I'm working on other mods as well - right now I've got a toggle switch hooked up, and may try a rotary switch. The idea is to have the app on the PC side fetch data from multiple sources (eg. load, # of errors, commits/hour, etc.), and use the switch to select which one to "view" on the orb.

A great project, with a lot of room for customization!

[devon.jones]

Also, as a note, I have it working from multiple sources via a udp server that holds the serial connection, and can take packets from any number of programs to change the color. The code is posted at http://svn.evilsoft.org/arduino/trunk/ambient_build/src/

ambientsvr requires python, twisted and python-serial
ambientctl is a command line program that can send commands to the server. It requires python.

[devon.jones]

Actually, I completely agree. My latest version uses RGB leds. I use 6 really high power ones and at this point, the orb is easy to see even in direct sunlight.

I built a custom PCB that I detailed here: http://www.evilsoft.org/?p=83

[madwilliamflint]

Hey I figured out the light mixing LED diffusion solution. (well that's bold. I've figured out A solution.)

I picked up some cheap emery boards and spent about a minute each on the LEDs. When done, the whole LED lens looks "frosted." I put the glass orb right over these without anything else and the mix is really delightful.

Another note:

I used 2 each of the high-intensity Red Green and Blue LEDs from SparkFun.

I have yet to do the final assembly (it's all on a mini prototype board with prototype jumper wires going to the Arduino board) but I'm very very happy with the results.

[willyw]

Hi, I was wondering if you can offer an alternative for the parts you have. The parts below I can't find on the jameco website. Is there another place you can get them or another part that will work the same? # 3 x Red LED, (33481) $0.27 ea # 220 ohm, 1/8W resistors (100), (107941) $0.69 Great article I'm really wanting to make one of these for my build projects at work. Thanks! :P

[devon.jones]

# 3 x Red LED, (333526), $0.22 ea with the resistors, looks liek Jameco doesn't sell 220 ohm on their own anymore, so that switches to radioshack: # 2x 220 ohm, 1/8W resistors (5), (271-011) $0.99 ea -or- # 500 assorted 1/8W resistors (271-003) $12,99 (yes, it has 10 220 ohm ones)

[biojae]

Wow, just before I saw this step, I was thinking about using just 3 r,g&b LEDs, Cool.

[XCabooseO]

Does your software allow it to do things that the ambient orb can do??? (ie. Check for email/see if "person x" is online/tell you if there is a new instructable via RSS) Cause if it does I'm DEFINETLY gonna build this. PS:Instructables thinks that the word instructables is miss spelled

[devon.jones]

So the Orb and the software on the Orb just takes commands sent to it over the USB. If you are using linux/mac os, you can just use cron to check the thing you want to check, and then send the right color command to the orb. For example, I have a small ruby script that is run once a minute that looks at our builds and then sets the orb to roaming or red blinking. Under windows, you can use something like the windows task scheduler or cronw. So far the only PC based software for this is script based stuff for specific applications, but the things you want to do are all really easy to accomplish with some small scripts.

[pierlo]

cool! i truly got inspired and wanna do it too. but isn't it possible to let the arduino work on its own and change the leds without being fed by the pc?

[devon.jones]

Absolutely. The "roaming mode" is what it goes to directly when turned on, so as long as it has power, it will fade from one color to the next. You only need a PC if you want to set it to a specific color, or if you want to make it blink - the color fade is automatic, and is the default mode.

[calqlater]

I like the simplicity of echoing RGB values out over the serial port. I also like that your orb sits next to a bottle of Marie Sharp's habanero sauce. Tasty stuff!

[xorshift]

Well done instructable! It has been mentioned before, but I find shaving the heads off the LEDS to be a great diffuser (with a dremel cut off disc) even if you mount the LEDS in a ping pong ball..