OctoPi mods and lighting...

[The Chairman]

I hate sneaker nets. You know what I mean. Flashing an SD card, walking it over to the 3D printer, and setting everything up right there. When it comes to 3D printing, one of the more popular solutions is OctoPrint, or if it's set up on a Raspberry Pi, it's called an OctoPi. It sits on my local net, and I access it through by web browser. One of the features it supports is giving you a real time look at your printer's progress. It's especially nice given my recent recovery from a broken leg.

So, I got an RPi 3 B+, and flashed a 32G micro SD card with the latest build. I set up the networking and a non-standard password and it was up. It was sweet except for the camera. It took me a bit to figure it out, but essentially, I enabled the camera as an input device. None of the how tos ever mentioned that, but it finally fell together. But, I have to say that the light in my home is not that conducive to seeing what's really happening. In addition, I didn't like the camera housing I got off of thingiverse. What would be cool, would be to use a circle RGB LED light around the lens. So I got a cheap light WS2812 from Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0105VMUUQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you're not familiar with these gems, each LED is comprised of 3 LEDs and a microprocessor. Each LED is addressable with a value from 0 to 255. I can create just about any hue or intensity, by sending a different input. Now I just have to drive it with my RPi. I am slowly learning how to do it. Have an idea or want to edumacate me? Here's your chance. Last night and this morning, I designed a housing and strut system for the light ring and camera... something I like. The third or fourth iteration is printing in the background. I'll post pictures when I get something I really like and I'll be putting the files on Thingiverse as well.

 

[The Chairman]

Here is the link to Thingiverse if you want to D-Load the files: OctoPi Camera and Light Ring Housing by NetDoc

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[The Chairman]

Here it is, all printed. Like I said, the lighting sucks, so you really can't see the camera lens in the center of the light ring.

I don't like the RPi case I printed, so I'm going to find a more suitable one, or design my own. It just sits on top of the Tornado control box and points towards the printer. I added an on/off pigtail for the power. Plugging and unplugging has ruined more than a few RPis. All that is left is running a bit of ribbon cable for the light down to the RPi, hooking it up and figuring out the programming to let me turn this on and off as I want.​

 

[Diving Dubai]

Pete

0-255 is The DMX (DMX 512 1992) protocol. It's 8bit Our control input would be 0-10 (0 being 0 and 10 being 255) becuase originally way back DMX was controlled by a 0-10v signal

Generally you would have 4 channels , RGB and intensity ( rather than RGB + Intensity for each array)

On a lighting control desk we would give the item a start address and then have 3 other addresses assigned to it

Hue and Sat can be additional channels (depending on what the microprocessor looks for) or be done by manipulating each channel

The same basic protocol is in use today in professional lighting systems within the entertainment and TV world with each fixture looking for a 0-255 signal on each channel (up to 20 times per sec)

 

[Manatee Diver]

These Raspberry Pi devices are pretty interesting, I am thinking about putting a few of them together to handle the internal DNS for my remote VPN sites.

 

[The Chairman]

It's 8bit Our control input would be 0-10 (0 being 0 and 10 being 255) becuase originally way back DMX was controlled by a 0-10v signal

This is a neopixel clone, so the inputs are 0-255. Apparently, you can control it via python, but I am not a parseltogue... at least not yet.

These Raspberry Pi devices are pretty interesting, I am thinking about putting a few of them together to handle the internal DNS for my remote VPN sites.

They really are. I own two RPi 3 B+s, am RPi 4 B+ and I just got an RPi Zero ($14) with a Camera ($7) to use as a light controller and video monitor in the workshop.

 

[Diving Dubai]

This is a neopixel clone, so the inputs are 0-255. Apparently, you can control it via python, but I am not a parseltogue... at least not yet.

Yes, 0-255 is DMX - although you're having to do it the hard way

As you know you can daisy chain multiple fixtures together (max 30) this is called a universe. It's comprised of 512 channels each controlled individually (0-255)

Had a quick nose around the web, and came up with this which might help Neopixel Programming

DMX can be buggy with timing and Null start codes, not sure if this will impact you, Wiki DMX will be a good start if you start running into issues

Good luck, Python is witchcraft to me

 

[The Chairman]

Good luck, Python is witchcraft to me

Me too. Me too.

 

[BenjaminF]

There should be quite a few tutorials/examples on Adafruit and Stack Overflow... Worst case, I'm sure that if you were to post your code and a description of the problem somebody would be able to help. At the risk of ending up in trouble, I'm sure that I'm not the only embedded systems programmer who is around

 

[-JD-]

AdaFruit version: NeoPixel Ring - 16 x 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers

They have a tutorial for controlling the Neopixel strands via RPi here: NeoPixels on Raspberry Pi

I hate Python. It seems as if somebody was trying to pick the worst of every preceding language when they crafted it ...