Controllable RGB LED system for your home or office

Step 5 Final Touches

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Once we get the system installed we sit back and enjoy it. Well, maybe not yet. Of course, there are problems that come up along the way while building and installing the system so by this point you may have to do some troubleshooting. Hopefully the major problems were discovered in the incremental testing done during the construction. By the time the whole system is up, usually everything is in working order.

At this step you can finalize the mounting and wiring of components and make everything tidy. You can also tweak (or start writing!) your control software. Writing the software is a lot of fun, especially when you get to the higher level software that describes what the LEDs look like. I call those routines the "painting" routines.

Previously I mentioned that you can control your system through different means. Some people just want to turn the system on and let it cycle by itself. In this type of system there should be preprogrammed routines or algorithms to fade, wipe or place random colors on the screen.

Demo code for the Prop Blade and LED Painter can be found on the Parallax Propeller Object Exchange or the Brilldea web site. The example code shows simple algorithms for fading and changing color.

Other people are control freaks! They want to control every pixel and every color in precise synchronization. The LED Painter and Prop Blade combo allows for DMX-512A control(like RS-485) or serial control (through the Prop plug). This means you can use software on your PC such as Vixen Lights to design a show with light and music synchronization. With the LED Painter, each control channel can be controlled from off to on in 255 steps. This allows for mixing of colors at various intensities.

Other things you could do with your LED system:

• Make it detect the beat of a song and change the look based on that. This would entail adding a microphone to your system and processing the input.
• Make it detect video and change the look based on that, sort of like Ambilight on Philips flat screen TVs. This may involve adding a computer that streams video to your TV or adding a web cam to capture your TV image.
• Make it turn on and off automatically at certain times. This could be based on day light, time of day, or detecting some one is in the room or close to the system.
• Make it controlled over the Internet so the world can turn on and off the LEDs in your living room.
• Connect the LED wall to your mood ring so the LED wall can reflect your mood!

We hope you enjoyed this Instructable. Be sure to learn more about Brilldea and our products by visiting our web site: Brilldea.com.