Description

The aim of the project was to create a modular box, with difference faces that offer different functionality, controlled by a microcomputer such as the Raspberry Pi. This was intended to have a variety of features such that it could be placed in a room and used in various ways, such as a speaker, light, thermometer, weather information, or just an ambient landscape.

Sadly due to COVID our time in the Imperial Hackspace was cut short, and we only had two sessions to work on the box. Fortunately in that time we still were able to create the speaker and light up parts of the box.

The result was an LED Light up box, lit up by WS2811 addressable LED strips, with a raspberry Pi controller. The LEDs are controlled by a python script running on the Raspberry Pi, using the WS281x library. These lights are attached to the inside of a translucent laser cut acrylic cube,so that the light diffused. Then we hooked up the speaker to an analogue to digital converter, so we could play music.

Outcomes we got from this were that modularised systems are extremely hard, and even with a powerful microprocessor like the Raspberry Pi it still would have been tricky to design and control 5 different faces at the same time, and make them all have clean interfaces to connect to the Raspberry Pi. We also planned for the LEDs to react to the sound, however due to COVID we only had a short amount of time to work on the project, and the LED lights and a speaker design took a lot of that time. Therefore, this ended up not being feasible within the time constraints we had. Overall though we managed to create an eccentric and novelty item which allows us to play music in a new and fun way, and with some work in the future could be extended to react to music.

We are planning to work on it further as University starts again, depending on COVID restrictions on the hackspace.