With the latest version of Blinkit it is now possible to choose light effects for Arduino devices. The first added effects are Rainbow, Ice, Fire and fade effect. The effects can be set to be triggered on a new Upvote or Follower for a saved user and on new Posts made by a user.
The effects can be used with a Arduino and a RGB LED.
With the planned upcoming new features for Blinkit, more themed and feature related light effects will be added in the near future.
What is Blinkit?
Blinkit is a notification software that can be used to give regular widely available devices a Steem purpose.
Supported devices:
- USB Sticks (with read/write status light)
- Philips hue lamps
- Sonoff smart Wifi switches
- Arduino (tested with Arduino Uno r3)
- Webcams (status LED and picture mode)
- Logitech keyboards, mouse, headsets (newly added)
Blinkit can look for new Steem account Upvotes, Followers, for a user and it can notify on new Posts made by a user.
More devices and actions will be added in the near future.
Blinkit is free and open source, and can be downloaded from the Blinkit Github page
https://github.com/techtek/Blinkit
Adding effects for Arduino to Blinkit
This Arduino integration is made toghter with @electronicsworld, he did the maths for the rgb effect values and Arduino code, and describes what was needed for this release on the Arduino side in his latest post.
Blinkit new features:
The user can now choose light effects: Rainbow, Fire, Ice and Fade.
The user can only select what is technical possible.
(Clearing and filling the drop down list with the values that correlate to what the set mode is, and the LEDs technically allow. (Modes: "1x RGB LED" can have themed light effects but with "3x Single Colour LED" mode they need to not be visible and selectable by the user. but instead only show the effects Blink and Fade)Send the effect settings to the Arduino
Blinkit - Arduino device screen
The Arduino device screen with the newly added effects for each action, notice that when rainbow is selected no colours can be chosen. but when Blink and Fade is selected a colour can be chosen.
When "3x Single colour LED" is selected, the Blink and fade effect wont show the dropdown menu's to select the colours. And the effects: Rainbow, Ice, Fire cant be selected in this mode as well.
Selecting a Effect for new Upvotes
The effects listed can be chosen in RGB Mode
How is it implemented
Saving and sending the effects
To be able to send the command to the Arduino the previously developed and added arduinosendcommmand.exe is used to send the data over serial to the Arduino, it collects the data from arduinosendcommand.txt This gets filled with the serial command prepared by the Blinkit interface when "save", or "start blinkit" is pressed by the user.
Code added that saves the effect when the user press "Start Blinkit" or the "Save".
Code that prepares the effect command and send it over serial to the Arduino. The Arduino than will use this effect on a newly detected Steem action.
Code that preloads the saved effects for each action
Code that fills the dropdown lists with the values corresponding to the selected mode (3x Single Colour LED or 1x RGB LED)
The following files have been updated/added:
The Blinkt repository is updated
The Blinkit source files repository is updated
It have taken a bit longer this time to integrate and test the new features, and a side effect is that this Github Commit also have a other NEW unseen feature inside it which will be posted about very very soon. (a hint for it can already be seen in the above screenshots...!)
Testing and improvements
If you have one of the supported device, and want to help out with testing it would be much apriciated.
Improvements to work on is the total time for saving / sending to Arduino. which is around 6 seconds.
Have you found a bug?
You could make a Utopian contribution and add an issue post to the project on Github. or get in touch on Discord and report the issues.
Do you want to make other devices compatible and make Blinkit better?
Please get in contact on Discord for more details.
Technical Support
Technical support is available, if you may encounter a problem, or if you want to know if your device is supported or will be supported in the near future.
How to contribute?
Do you have a question, or suggestion for Blinkit?
Do you want to make other devices compatible and make Blinkit better?
Feel free to contact me on Discord, don't hesitate and get in touch! or leave a comment.