Internet-Connected Speakers

Finished product

When I watch TV, I find certain commercials to be very annoying. Usually I try to mute them myself before the rage sets in. Unfortunately I can't always find the remote, and sometimes I forget to un-mute the TV and I'll miss actual programming.

Jeep commercials are particularly bad for me

Ideally, I could train a system to pick up on sounds from certain commercials and mute them automatically. I think this is too large of a scope for me and I would lose interest. The next best thing is to have an Alexa skill to control my TV. (If you're not familiar with Alexa skills, they are essentially apps you can install on your Amazon Echo.) "Alexa, mute this commercial," might mute the speakers for exactly 30 seconds, solving both the can't-find-the-remote problem and the accidentally-muted-real-programming problem. If I built this skill, I would also be able to control any aspect of my speakers or TV, like "Alexa, channel up."

My goal was to build an IR blaster (basically a smart remote) that would be connected to my Amazon Echo. In this post I'll show how the IR blaster is assembled and programmed, and later on I'll show the Alexa skill to control it.

The heart of the project is an ESP8266 chip in an ESP-01 breakout.

We'll program this chip to host a webserver and control the infrared LED, which will control the speakers.

Materials needed:

• ESP8266 controller with ESP-01 breakout
• USB cable
• USB-B breakout (or any USB breakout)
• AMS1117 3.3v voltage regulator
• 22uF and 10 uF capacitors (for the voltage regulator)
• 10k ohm and 200 ohm resistors
• On/off switch (optional)
• Infrared LED
• Jumper wires and solder
• Small PCB
• 2N2222 transistor

If you're keeping track, the most expensive thing on here is the ESP-8266, which retails for about $7. After it's all said and done, this internet-connected IR blaster can easily be put together for about $20, and could be mass produced for far less.

Tools needed:

• Dremel for shaping the PCB
• FTDI controller to program the ESP chip
• Soldering iron
• Benchtop power supply and breadboard (Recommended for prototyping)
• Regular LED for prototyping

First, I wanted to re-flash my ESP chip to get a simple LED blinking. Alasdair Allan has an awesome article demonstrating how to flash your ESP8266 chip using an FTDI controller. You can follow these instructions to get an LED blinking.

When you're comfortable programming the ESP-8266 chip, you can start experimenting with Mark Szabo's IRRemoteESP8266 Arduino library. Specifically, I worked from the IRServer example. I had to make three important changes:

1. For this build, I used the RX pin to control the LED. There is a specific reason why I chose not to use GPIO. Therefore you need to intitialize the IRsend object like so:

  IRsend irsend(3);

2. Using the MDNSResponder object caused my program to run into heap overflows very quickly, so I used static routing instead. I commented out all mention of MDNSResponder.

3. I added the codes for the Audioengine A5+ powered speakers. I discovered them listed here, but not in the format we need. I had to translate them to raw NEC hex codes by hand. If you've stumbled here from Google looking for A5+ codes, here they are:

  Power = 0xBF807F = 12550271
  Mute = 0xBFC03F = 12566591
  Vol- = 0xBFE01F = 12574751
  Vol+ = 0xBF906F = 12554351

Now let's verify that the webserver is running and functional. You'll need to discover the IP address of the IR blaster. You can do this by setting it yourself with static routing, or looking at your router's DHCP table, or through a separate sketch that outputs the IP address to serial. If you go to this IP address in your browser, you should see the landing page from Mark's example.

To verify that the blaster is blasting, let's wire up the circuit on a breadboard.

The ESP-01 breakout for reference

Circuit diagram for the IR blaster.

After uploading the sketch, you can keep the power and CH_PD hooked up to your FTDI controller. Connect the transistor, resistors and a regular (non-IR) LED according to the circuit above. Opening the IRServer website and sending commands should make your LED flash.

After verifying that the server works, you can prototype the rest of the circuit, including the voltage regulator and USB power, on a breadboard.

Here is my server on PCB:

IR blaster partially disassembled

Underside of the server

The IR blaster connected to my speakers

Luckily my Audioengine A5+ speakers had a built-in USB port, so I simply connected my server there and taped it to the side of the speakers. Using a modified IRServer example, I can send volume control and mute commands over the internet. With these ingredients, an Alexa sketch is not too far away.

The Pendulum Clock

If you've ever rode the Link Light Rail in Seattle to the airport, you may have glanced out of the window while traveling through a tunnel and seen playing cards illuminated on the walls. These images are not made from two dimensional screens. Each display is just a row of lights that changes rapidly as the train drives by, giving the illusion of a two-dimensional picture.

The University Street station also has rows of lights blinking on the walls on the mezzanine floor. I always point out the artwork whenever I walk through the station with someone. At first glance the displays just appear to be red lines, but if you move your eyes rapidly from side to side, there are images hidden in how the lights blink.

That was the inspiration for the Pendulum Clock.

YouTube link - Gfycat mirror

Hint: Stare at the cord; don't follow the pendulum with your eyes.

You might not see it at first, but it is showing an analog clock face that reads 2:40. Usually it takes a couple swings to see the picture. Once you see it, it becomes very easy to read the time.

The Pendulum Clock has a row of 64 white LEDs that change based on the position of the pendulum. I've used it to display an analog clock face, but it can be used to display any 2D image. The motion of the clock is not powered; you have to manually push the pendulum to one side to start it moving.

It's powered by a simple Arduino Uno, a DS1307 RTC for keeping time, a MAX7219 LED controller, and a bad ass rotary encoder. The case is a Hammond box, which fit all of the components with just the right amount of room. The face is a 4"x24" piece of basswood.

Finished product

I knew I wanted to display a 2D image using a 1D set of LEDs. I had a few different designs laid out: a rotating set of LEDs driven by a motor, or a row of LEDs that would move laterally. I finally decided on the pendulum because motor-driven displays have been done before, and I wanted to make something new.

There were a couple challenges here that thankfully were easy to overcome. At first I looked at NeoPixels for the line of LEDs. This probably wouldn't work because NeoPixels introduce a small delay as the pixel is propagated down the line. I didn't know if the MAX7219 controller would be fast enough to drive the LEDs; if there was too much of a delay, the image would be skewed or mangled. I started with the MAX7219. I also bought some shift registers just in case; the shift registers would be fast enough but would require more connections.

First I created the LED display.  Prefabricated 8x8 LED matrices were easy to find, but I could not find 1x64 matrices that used the digit/segment wiring scheme that the MAX7219 expects. With the MAX7219 powering a numeric display, a set of LEDs in one digit share a common cathode, and the Nth segment of every digit share a common anode. For the 8x8 matrix, each row shares a common cathode and each column shares a common anode. For my 1x64 matrix, every 8 LEDs share a cathode, while every N%8 LED shares a common anode.

To create the rows, I purchased three Breadboard-style PCBs from Adafruit and cut them in half down the center. I soldered an LED to every two rows. The rails running down the board would be used for cathodes. I cut the rails at every 16th row and soldered the cathodes to the rails.

I then started using some enamel-coated magnet wire to connect the anodes. With 64 connections this was the most time consuming part. Four of the "columns" were connected on the LEDs contacts and four were connected through the breadboard:

Connected the first few anodes

All of the anodes connected and Kragled to the wooden clock face

After all of the LEDs were strung together, I used some more magnet wire to connect the digits and segments to the MAX7219 breakout. I hooked up an Arduino, found some 8x8 example code, and got a pixel to bounce back and forth on the display. Sweet!

Now I needed a way to find the position of the pendulum. If I had used a stepper motor, this would have been trivial. I was thinking of breaking IR beams at the top of the swing, and interpolating the position through the middle. This would become less reliable as the pendulum slowed down. I discovered that a rotary encoder would be perfect for this.

Mounting the rotary encoder to the enclosure.

The encoder, Arduino and RTC mounted in the enclosure.

While the spec says the maximum load is 3N, the encoder seems to support the pendulum just fine with no noticeable resistance. The encoder came with a plastic nut that allowed me to attach a bolt for the clock face.

It's a tight fit, but it works!

You'll notice that the clock draws a perfect circle. In the arduino sketch, I have routines that draw the clock face and clock hands on the cartesian plane. Every time a pixel is set on the cartesian plane, it is transformed to polar coordinates and stored in a 2D array. As the pendulum rotates, the encoder triggers interrupts on the Arduino and updates a counter. The loop() routine updates the display based on the counter position, which is one dimension in the array. When the pendulum stops moving, the array is refreshed with the latest time, and the home position is recalibrated.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this project! Drop me a message if you'd like any more information.

The Color of Umphrey's

If you've ever seen an Umphrey's McGee concert, you might notice that the light show is something else.  Jefferson Waful (the lighting guy) uses bright, complementary colors choreographed to the music.

Generally, there are certain parts of the songs that always have their own lighting.  For example, for the short satanic vocals in Resolution, the lights will always switch to dark red, then back to blue or green when they're over.

I wrote a program to scan Umphrey's videos and pick out the 1-3 most prominent colors.  Another script draws these data left from right, where each pixel is half a second of rock and roll.  The resulting diagram is a visual thumbprint of an Umphrey's song.  Here are two samples from All Good 2009:

40's Theme

The Floor

I'm currently scanning the rest of the All Good concert.  I plan to arrange a show poster with a thumbprint from each song.

The scanner uses JavaCV to interpret the video data.  I created a histogram of the colors in each frame.  I calculate the HSV coordinates for each pixel, and I tally the saturation, value and pixel count by the pixels' hues.  I only count pixels that are above a minimum value.  From the histogram, I pick out the most prominent color by finding the hues with the highest pixel counts.  I use the average recorded value and max out the saturation.

Then I use Python Imaging Library to plot the data in an image file.

Right now I'm really only plotting some parts of the true colors.  I maximize saturation, making the diagram as colorful as possible.  However, that removes white lights (as the color white has zero saturation).  So white lights can turn out yellow or brown on this plot  I'm still experimenting with the algorithm to see if I can capture white/grey lighting as well.

I'm pretty excited about how this is turning out.  I think I will place the colors as highlights on top of a black and white photo of the show.  Stay tuned for more updates as I arrange the poster.  If you have any requests for shows, please let me know.

Edit: I finally got around to creating this poster almost six years later

The Graphic Equalizer Display

The Graphic Equalizer Display is a device that shows the loudness of the music you're playing, broken down by bass, midtones and treble.  It uses a microphone, so any ambient sounds or music will be picked up.  Play the video below to see it in action.

Long ago I picked up a 16x32 LED display from Adafruit.  This thing was amazing, but I didn't know what I would do with it.  When I found this graphic equalizer chip on Sparkfun, I decided to put the two together.  The display uses a microphone, so any sounds or music can be picked up.  Total cost is about $100, but I can put together a bill of materials if there's interest.

This time I wanted to set up a permanent circuit; jumper wires and breadboards were unruly and would not be appropriate for the design I was aiming for.  I wanted everything to be self-contained, so the device could be mounted on my wall or sit atop a speaker.

Above is my prototype setup, connecting the display directly to the Arduino and using a breadboard to prove my circuit.  On the bottom of the breadboard you can see the MSGEQ7 chip straddling the divider and an electret microphone breakout.  On the top is a potentiometer to control the brightness, and a voltage regulator because I only had 9V adaptors.  I had to use a separate power rail between the display and the audio, because one was interfering with the other; the display uses the external regulator while the audio uses the Arduino's internal regulator.

Once the code was working, the result was pretty magical.  My code can be found on a bitbucket repository.

Above and below: circuit diagrams for the prototype shield.  The shield sits atop the arduino and allows you to plug in the display ribbon cable, the voltage regulator, the microphone, the potentiometer and the equalizer chip.

(If you're an EE and you're actually looking at the circuits, you might notice some resistors and capacitors connected in series.  I didn't have all of the right capacitors or resistors on hand, so I had to make due.)

 

  

Above and below: here is the prototype shield after about 12 hours of soldering.  This is the part I'm most proud of.  I thought everything came together well.

 

To package the thing, I used the plastic box from my first Arduino starter kit.  I think these things can still be found at RadioShack.  I crammed all of the electronics in the box and screwed the screen to one side.

The potentiometer above met its end when I tried to krazy glue it to the box.  Now it's just a resistor.  The MEMS microphone pictured didn't work out for this project; it couldn't pick up lower ranges, so I went with the electret.  The regulator is attached to an aluminium heatsink from RadioShack.

I dremeled openings for USB and VIN, made some room for the ribbon cable, and made openings for the potentiometer and the regulator.  I used some risers to screw in the Arduino.  This was my first project that wouldn't rattle around if you shook it.  The risers were pretty high, making for a tight fit.

Placing the shield on top of the Arduino

Screwing the case to the display

Attaching the ribbon cable

Front view

The heatsink is taped to the top.  It looks stupid but I didn't have a better place for it.

Here you can barely make out the blue pot on the bottom right for brightness control.

All in all this project took about 24 hours of work spread out over two or three weeks.  It was by far the most complex and rewarding I've done so far.  Many parts were frustrating, but the result is great.


Next up, I might include this with a bluetooth speaker.

I got a lot of help from J Skoba's use of the MSGEQ7 and Adafruit's instructions for their 16x32 LED display.

Thinking Man

This project was featured in the Feb/March 2016 issue of Make: magazine and on the Make: website! The Make website has an awesome build video.

When you turn it on, Thinking Man grabs a random post title from reddit.com/r/showerthoughts and prints it out.

When you first plug it in or press the button on the back of the neck, a post is downloaded and printed.

The thermal printer came from Sparkfun.

The guts include an Arduino Mega, and an ESP8266-based wifi module that I have hooked up to a 3.3v voltage regulator and logic level converter.  This photo shows power coming from a bench power supply and a buck converter, but it can be powered by a 9v 2a wall wart.

I adapted the code from the Hackaday ESP8266 demo.