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By RichardS
#43164 User
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Description
N'cube is a graphical notification system. It can be used to display the temperature, forcasted weather, user defined messages or any other desired information on it's 10x10 LED ,matrix display.
Moreover, it also has an ambient light mode to set the mood based on user input or current weather for example.

Nevertheless all kind of information is displayed like text, drawings and different effects using the matrix display.

The project is built using the ESP8266 at its core, driving a 10x10 WS2812b pixel matrix. All is encapsulated in a cube of 25x25x25 white plexiglass.
For the ambi light 6 connected Neopixels are used.

In order to interract with the cube, I have configured a Node Red server and created some flows.Using MQTT protocol we are able to create a realtime communication with the ESP for data display. On the ESP I am using PubSubLib.

In the current configuration, the cube displays the temperature and sets the mood based on the current weather.The temperature is retrieved from http://openweathermap.org/ and sent to the ESP where it is being converted and sent to the LED matrix for display.
To drive the matrix I am using Adafruit Neopixel and Matrix Libraries.

To phisically interreact with the cube, I am using an Ultrasonic sensor to get the distance to the user. Based on the distance, I am displaying information on the cube. As the user aproaches or moves further from the cube, different information is displayed.

To control the ambilight, the PIR sensor is used. No point in leaving those LED's on, if there is nobody in the room.


With the current architecture it is very easy to create new scenarios for other notifications like email or tweets being reveived, facebook posts, parsing and displaying news on the display.Using the WebServer features we can also create an application so we do not need to code the notifications, but configure them from the browser (work in progress).

Parts
NodeMCU with ESP8266
Level shifter
1000uF capacitor
100 ws2812b LED's
6 Neopixels
Ultrasonic sensor
PIR sensor

Links

Video


Images
Attachments
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