My RGB LED Stairs Illumination video

OP will have to give you the Bill of Materials and we aren't exactly here to babysit a development.

If you have absolutely no electronics prototyping or development experience at all, I fear you may make a newbie mistake. The club owner shouldn't be asking you, but rather some engineer nearby. Not that I doubt your ability, everybody is able to its just I don't want them to lose faith in you.

If you want to do this yourself, then I suggest looking into a few things before you try and tackle this as your first project.
Yes you have to read allll of this, but it will help you a lottttt so just bear with me.

First off, you need an arduino or some sort of arduino clone development board. Many recommend the UNO, and I do as well for you. Its the most popular and most simple one to understand.

When I started, my brother bought me this book and it helped immensly, I was gonna quit but this book helped make it pretty clear to me on how things worked.

It helped out a lot with describing the basics of prototyping with the arduino and coding and everything I needed to know to just get started.
That was 4 years ago, so it may be a little dated, but all the concepts should be the same.
There may be an e-book or a pdf out there of this book too if you can't find a bookstore that carries it or something.

If you can, get all the parts in this kit. The book is made to go along with a kit and it should work just fine with this one.

Don't buy that product unless you want less hassle and have money to throw around.
You can get all those components at websites like Digi-key and Mouser or even just eBay.

Notes about the above kit:
-The USB cable is USB-A to USB-B, like a printer cable kinda.
-The deluxe jumper wires are just Male-Male jumper wires
-There are two types of RGB leds, common anode or common cathode. Not sure which it is, so just get both
-Everything else is straight forward

Once you have gotten all that and have done a few of the stuff in the book, work look over some of these things.

This link is for the external IC, the TLC5940 16-channel PWM LED driver
http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/TLC5940
Seeing as how you are new to this, i'll explain a bit. The TLC5940 is a 16-channel constant current led driver with grayscale correction. Basically what that means is that it can individually control 16 leds. It is commonly used with RGB leds, like in this project. NOTE: This driver sinks current, not source, so you will have to have common ANODE RGB LEDS. (If you don't quite get that, you will through learning from the book, and you can search google. its very well explained. If you do decide to stick around, you'll probably ask some questions and chances are, you will get a response from Grumpy_Mike. Hes very knowledgeable and he has a website. He explains things very nicely. Link : Tutorials. There you can learn what the PWM means.

You will also want to check out http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoToBreadboard
This link is a little old, and refers back to the ATmega168, but it is still completely valid. This would be a more advanced thing to you, something you would do when you have grasped the arduino platform and basic electronics pretty well.
This project is a standalone project, in that it does not have a full arduino board integrated into the project. It is driven by the microcontroller it is just on its own board and is no longer dependent on the Arduino board to operate. You will need an extra ATmega328p to do this.

You will also need to look up analog inputs, that is covered in the book though.
There are a lot of things you need to know to get this done, and I hope the best of luck. You can ask any questions any time if you decide to pursue this. I hope you do, because it is really fun.

I never done anything close to electronics

This is definitely not a project to start with. First one blinks a led. Then a few leds. Then a lot of leds. Then one rgb led, then a few rgb leds, then a lot of rgb leds. Meanwhile one learns blink without delay and debouncing, and led sequences, and state-based programming and so on.

Also, a club is a public place, so safety regulations must be taken into account. Say you light up the entire stairs for half an hour and something gets so hot it could start a fire... Pretty scary...

A good consultant is what you need, IMVHO.

tuxduino:

I never done anything close to electronics

This is definitely not a project to start with. First one blinks a led. Then a few leds. Then a lot of leds. Then one rgb led, then a few rgb leds, then a lot of rgb leds. Meanwhile one learns blink without delay and debouncing, and led sequences, and state-based programming and so on.

Also, a club is a public place, so safety regulations must be taken into account. Say you light up the entire stairs for half an hour and something gets so hot it could start a fire... Pretty scary...

A good consultant is what you need, IMVHO.

We've already established this.

We've already established this.

Hmmm.... maybe I came in too late. Sorry.

I would also be interested in how you mounted the LED's? Did you just use 1 RGB LED per step or more than one? I see that the TLC5940 can sink plenty of current so I'm considering using 2 or 3 per step.

Thanks!

You might want to check out the tlc5947. More channels, easier to use. Only hurdle is mounting it b/c it only comes in surface mount packages.

funkyguy4000:
You might want to check out the tlc5947. More channels, easier to use. Only hurdle is mounting it b/c it only comes in surface mount packages.

Wow just checked it out, 24 channels on one chip is pretty epic! SMD is not a problem for me to solder but I'm not sure if I could etch some PCB's with that pitch hmmm.

Do you think the standard TLC5940 library would need much tweeking?

Sorry for my late response, I'm freaking out with my last non final test at university.

I haven't been able to get them mounted to exactly test them, although through research, It seems that you don't even really need a library for them. They are basically just giant shift registers except instead of shifting on or off, you shift specific values between 0 - 1023 or w/e it calls for. Then you just latch the values in and bam, you got purple or w/e is connected to the channels.

Only problem is that if you put a lot of chips in the daisy-chain line, then you may need a faster processor depending on how fast you want to update the values

Shot in the dark here, but I got some TLC5947s as samples from TI. Does anyone have a simple test sketch for them? I sent out the PCB design for the 5947 a few days ago, so I won't be able to play with it for a couple of weeks.

Found this on google http://www.razorconcepts.net/tlc5947.html

It mentions the code here http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.razorconcepts.net/files/tlc5947.txt

It looked pretty crappy so I took the liberty to put it in a sketch although I haven't verified it b/c I have yet to buy a toaster to make my circuit boards to use these chips. I've attached the file.

Simple_basic.ino (938 Bytes)

Thanks funky, I will take a look at it. I haven't received my boards yet. For some reason, OSH is taken it's time...

+1

How long has it been? OSH usually take 15-20 days for me.

Cranium:
Here is a photo of the breadboard design:

That's the most colorful breadboard design I've ever seen :slight_smile: Beautiful. I bet it's going to make you feel heavy-hearted when you have to pull it apart :wink:

harleydk:

Cranium:
Here is a photo of the breadboard design:

That's the most colorful breadboard design I've ever seen :slight_smile: Beautiful. I bet it's going to make you feel heavy-hearted when you have to pull it apart :wink:

Pulling those things apart always sucks.

Anyway, Cranium, has there been any updates to your project?

funkyguy4000:

tuxduino:

I never done anything close to electronics

This is definitely not a project to start with. First one blinks a led. Then a few leds. Then a lot of leds. Then one rgb led, then a few rgb leds, then a lot of rgb leds. Meanwhile one learns blink without delay and debouncing, and led sequences, and state-based programming and so on.

Also, a club is a public place, so safety regulations must be taken into account. Say you light up the entire stairs for half an hour and something gets so hot it could start a fire... Pretty scary...

A good consultant is what you need, IMVHO.

We've already established this.

Wow, don't be a jerk about it. You don't have to have to be the only person to address this. He was only trying to give some FRIENDLY advice....

I am glad to see some of you have done this as I am planing to do a similar thing in my house but was thinking of using a Long Range Ultrasonic Rangefinder (like in link below or hacking a cheap ultrasonic tape measure) at one end facing up or down the staircase so i could could get away with only one sensor (i have not tested this part yet)

Then using a 96ch driver board (like in the link) to control all the RGB leds. i have a lot of steps so would be to many to do without shift registers or some multiplexing so i figured i would just keep it simple and use the 96ch board as it has lots of channels and you can run several feet of strip on each channel (i may use flex strips and put one under the lip of each step shining down into a piece of plexi glass with some designs or words carved into them) or do modules like in your video

Then use an Arduino running the Fast Spi Library (to make things easier) as i am not that good at coding yet.
but if anyone has tried using a range finder yet i would love to hear if it works for detecting people.

Links
Long Range Ultrasonic Rangefinder (at one top or bottom of stairs)
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2157394_-1

96ch (SPI (TTL) Decoder 32x RGB Ch) (one of these can do up to 32 RGB stairs so i will have some extra channels)

Fast SPI Library for Arduino and 595 shift register (I think you have to use the old one as i am not sure the new one supports the 595 decoder)
https://code.google.com/p/fastspi/

Here is a video from the guy that made the library

I didn't realize that I referenced your video in my post. RGB LED strip stair project with sensors - Project Guidance - Arduino Forum

I'm looking for assistance in starting my project. Do you have any recommendations as to what materials to purchase?

Cranium:
Finished up the stairs this weekend. Pressure senors installed and calibrated. LEDs mounted. Light sensor installed and calibrated. All that is left is to tidy up the mess in the closet under the stairs.

$2/year to operate this cool night light. :slight_smile:

Stairs RGB LED Illumination project - YouTube

The stair lights are still working flawlessly after over two years! The only work I've had to do is to re-attach some of the blocks with the LEDs on the walls after my dog runs up the stairs and inadvertently knocks one off. These are only hot glued on so they are easy to re-attach. :slight_smile:

I am fairly new to working with these LED driving chips (WS2803, M5451, TLC5947s & such) and I am trying to get a handle on them, but I can not find a good sketch to breakdown. Can somebody please post one with a bit of an explanation? I basicly want to use the WS2803 because i wil not be needing a voltage regulator with that one (or so i've read).