Advice requested: Lighting an LED from a PC

[Pingless]

Hi all,

I'm considering building a very simple setup where I have one or two LEDs which my computer can light up using some kind of shell command. The idea behind this is that I'd like to know when a background task on my computer (a compile) is running and see when it's finished so I can stop browsing the internet and get back to work.

Off the top of my head I know I can solve this using an rPi connected to the internet, and have my PC send POSTs to a webserver with a pub/sub system that the rPi listens to. That, however, is £30 in kit alone and probably massive overkill.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to solve this with minimal kit and effort, ideally using something that I can both power and communicate with using my laptop's USB port?

Thanks,

Paul

[Jim Hayes]

One of the little china arduino clones with a built in usb-ttl chip should do it, a couple of quid from china with a long wait for delivery or a few quid more from the uk.

An esp8266 would do it over wifi, around 3 quid from china, 8 or so from UK, but you'd have to power it (a phone charger is fine)

There is a commercial usb led gizmo, but I can't recall the name of it. I looked quite nice for what it is.

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[A S]

You have a Mac don't you?
https://github.com/cfree3/brew-notify/blob/master/brew_notify.sh

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[Pingless]

On Wednesday, 30 March 2016 17:56:12 UTC+1, 930913 wrote:

You have a Mac don't you?
https://github.com/cfree3/brew-notify/blob/master/brew_notify.sh

Interesting idea thanks; I have an ubuntu machine but would still be able to toggle the keyboard LEDs. Sadly they aren't bright enough for me.

 On Wednesday, 30 March 2016 17:51:00 UTC+1, jim80 wrote:

There is a commercial usb led gizmo, but I can't recall the name of it. I looked quite nice for what it is.

That's a great idea. I searched around and found blink(1) for £30, and BlinkStick Nano for £15 (which I've now bought one of). Will report back on how good it is.

[Eugene Nadyrshin]

To expand on the esp8266 solution that Jim mentioned, there's an assembled board with a USB chip and an RGB led you can use for £2.57!!!! (link here). Not got this specific board yet (it's on the way) but it's amazing hackable for the price!

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[Jim Hayes]

I think I spotted those on ebay from uk for about 6 quid. 

The other nice thing about them is you can remove the USB board once you have your code uploaded and running (you'd have to think about powering it then though, of course)

You can also upload new code over wifi if you set that up with your arduino editor (If that's what you use)

I got a few similar boards minus rgb led here for $4, usb is on board though.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/D1-mini-Mini-NodeMcu-4M-bytes-Lua-WIFI-Internet-of-Things-development-board-based-ESP8266/32529101036.html?spm=2114.10010108.100010.1.cnesgo

Only thing to watch with both of them is the driver for the usb chip (WCH 340), it took me a little while to find a link for a signed and working OSX driver, but they are on the manufacturers web site now.

Once I had that they work fine on OSX.

[Jim Hayes]

I think it was the blink/blinkstick I was thinking of, yes! Well done finding it, I gave up far too quickly!

[Jon Russell]

What we've done in our office is used Ikea lamps with WiFi RGB bulbs in them. Like the Philips Hue bulbs.

We then have a script on the server than monitors our Bamboo server.

If any of the automated builds fail, the script notices and sends the commands over the network to all the bulbs, which all turn red.

You know instantly when someone has checked in some dodgy code, as all the bulbs in the office turn red !

:-)

This will cost more than a RPi, but its much more scalable. We are experimenting with extending the bulbs over the VPN to our offshore offices, so their bulbs turn red too, controlled from our office :-)

Regards,

Jon.

[tim_n]

Better - only turn the lightbulb over the person who checked in the code as red.

Best - angry meter for boss.  As boss gets angry, bulbs go from calming blue/green to yellow/red

[owen.r...@gmail.com]

Sounds like a good project for a Particle core: https://www.particle.io/. If you get the "Internet button" kit (https://www.particle.io/button) then you have 12 LEDs, 4 switches, a buzzer etc in a convenient desktop package.

 They're crazy-easy to get playing with. Onboard wifi, can flash code remotely, and they have a whole series of APIs to easily push/pull data, do pubsub, etc... you can even control ze blinkenlights with a  quick http request. This means you can manage the code & data from anywhere, and power it off USB somewhere else (another PC, wall-wart, whatever).

They're a wee bit pricey for what they are (esp. with international shipping); you could definitely homebrew something for less; but you're paying for the conveniece. For a beginner wanting results fast, that might be worth it.

- Owen -

On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 5:44:39 PM UTC+1, Pingless wrote:

[Pingless]

On Friday, 1 April 2016 16:18:22 UTC+1, owen.r...@gmail.com wrote:

Sounds like a good project for a Particle core: https://www.particle.io/. If you get the "Internet button" kit (https://www.particle.io/button) then you have 12 LEDs, 4 switches, a buzzer etc in a convenient desktop package.

 They're crazy-easy to get playing with. Onboard wifi, can flash code remotely, and they have a whole series of APIs to easily push/pull data, do pubsub, etc... you can even control ze blinkenlights with a  quick http request. This means you can manage the code & data from anywhere, and power it off USB somewhere else (another PC, wall-wart, whatever).

They're a wee bit pricey for what they are (esp. with international shipping); you could definitely homebrew something for less; but you're paying for the conveniece. For a beginner wanting results fast, that might be worth it.

Thanks Owen,

for a total of $70 ($50 plus $20 shipping) it's a bit much. It might be convenient, but it's certainly overkill for the solution I want, especially as the £15 gizmo that James suggested does exactly what I want, and if I wanted to hack around I'd get the £3 arduino clone and work with that.

Thanks for your suggestion though!