Published March 29, 2016 © MIT

USB MultiColor Saint Valentin Love Cup Controlled with C#

USB MultiColor Saint Valentin Love Cup controlled with C#

IntermediateProtip1,079

Things used in this project

Hardware components

SparkFun microB USB Breakout

Story

Make a Saint Valentin Love Cup bought for $1 prettier by adding some RGB LED (Red, Green, Blue or multi-color). The Love Cup is USB programmable with C# or VB.NET.

caption (optional)

But I did not want to use a Raspberry PI or an Arduino, I wanted to make it a kind of programmable USB Device.

Nusbio is a hardware + software platform to make simple programmable USB device with any .NET languages. It is little bit like the Raspberry PI Gpios, but for Windows and .NET.

I used RGB LED of type APA 102, mostly because they are supported out of the box by Nusbio and the LED strip is very easy to connect. I used a one meter 60 LEDs strip.

The APA 102 protocol communication is SPI without the select pin. The 4 pins are

-----------------------------------
SPI STRIP         | Nusbio
-----------------------------------
 GND              | GND
 5V (VCC)	  | VCC
 DI Data In       | Gpio1
 CI Clock In      | Gpio0

Nusbio device web site: Nusbio.

Untitled file

public static void RainbowDemo2(APA102LEDStrip ledStrip, int jStep)
{
    Console.Clear();
    ConsoleEx.TitleBar(0, "Rainbow Demo");
    ConsoleEx.WriteMenu(-1, 2, "Q)uit");
    ConsoleEx.WriteMenu(-1, 3, "");

    int brigthness = 6;
    int wait        = GetWaitTimeUnit(ledStrip)/2;
    var quit        = false;
    ledStrip.AllOff();

    while (!quit) 
    {                
        for(var j=0; j < 256; j += jStep) 
        {
            ConsoleEx.Gotoxy(0, 4);
            ledStrip.Reset();

            for (var i = 0; i < ledStrip.MaxLed; i++)
            {
                ledStrip.AddRGBSequence(false, brigthness, RGBHelper.Wheel((i * 256 / ledStrip.MaxLed) + j));
            }
            for (var i = 0; i < ledStrip.MaxLed; i++)
            {
                var wheelIndex = (i * 256 / ledStrip.MaxLed) + j;
                var bkColor = ledStrip.LedColors[i];
                Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Color:{0}, Wheel:{1}, rgb:{2}", 
                    bkColor.Name,  wheelIndex.ToString("000"), APA102LEDStrip.ToDecValue(bkColor)));
            }
            ledStrip.Show().Wait(wait);    
            if(Console.KeyAvailable) 
            {
                var k = Console.ReadKey(true).Key;
                if (k == ConsoleKey.Q) 
                { 
                    quit = true;
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    ledStrip.AllOff();
}