A project to create an ambient interface using LEDs to show various environmental data.

Background

I wanted to create a light display as a site specific installation to  fit over my window, which is five metres wide. I bought a rope of 300  addressable NeoPixel LEDs and started to think about what I could sense,  what I would want to know and how I might want to see it displayed.

I was inspired by Light Tower 1972-2016 by Philip Vaughan which was mounted on the roof of the Hayward Gallery from 1972 to 2016.  I fondly remember seeing the work daily when I was studying at King’s  College and regularly walking over Waterloo Bridge.

We were already using the Adafruit Metro M0 in class and so I decided  to use a weather related sensor for my project and found the BME680  from Pimoroni. It returns four readings which I was interested in:  temperature, humidity, air pressure and volatile organic compounds (VOC -  a proxy measure for certain air pollution). I also bought a small OLED  screen which I found was incredibly helpful for debugging purposes as  well as a nice addition for information output. It was slightly tricky  getting both the BME680 sensor and the OLED screen working since they  used the same pins, but I found out it can use the I2C interface and  that there are two address which can be switched by soldering closed a  jumper switch on the back.

Once I had the sensor working I logged some measurements via the serial interface using a small NodeJS script. I was then able  to get some idea of the range of values I could expect and the rates of  change. Thinking about a strip of LEDs as output I came up with the  follow ways of expressing data:

  • Static colour and change of colours over time
  • Movement of pixels, as individual cells, or as larger groups
  • Difference in colour to neighbours
  • Animation by blinking and fading pixels
  • Brightness of pixels and change of brightness over time

I wrote a bunch of test scenes for the LEDs and learned how to use  VS Code as an editor for Arduino code. I found it was much easier to  simulate the sensor inputs using a variable resistor, and used that to  cycle through the range of inputs and outputs. I used a button to switch  between scenes. It was a challenge writing my code so that each scene  could run and still return to the main loop to check for button pushes  and the value of the variable resistor. I split my code into different  header files, I'm not sure it was the best solution as there are a lot  of global variables, but it made the code more manageable. If I had more  time I would like to look at using C++ classes and especially creating a  class which would easily allow me to do running/longer term averages of  the sensor data so that I could show rates of change.

I learned that powering so many LEDs at maximum is a big technical  challenge in its own right and that did cause some constraints on my  ideas for how I could use the lights for output. I also would have liked  to use a board which has WiFi as then I could connect to internet APIs  to get weather data and predictions, however this was more complex still  for coding and power as the boards seemed to only output 3.3v and I  needed 5v.

Overall I'm really happy with the outcome and I would really like to  continue to work on it and perhaps overcome some of the limitations I  reached.

Wiring Diagram

Fritzing diagram of circuit

I later changed to use a rotator switch which I was unable to find in Fritzing so I still show the variable resistor

Plans for development

  • Add rain sensor YL38
  • Add real-time clock HW-84
  • Create C++ class to track average sensor values over time
  • Switch to WiFi enabled board and connect to web APIs to get weather data and forecasts

Parts list

  • Adafruit Metro M0
  • Adafruit BME680 Sensor - temperature, humidity, air pressure, VOC
  • SSD1306 Monochrome OLED screen, 128x32 pixels
  • WS2811 "NeoPixel" rope 300 pixels
  • HW-040 Rotary encoder and switch
  • 1000µF 6.3V capacitor
  • 5V 2A DC power supply

Libraries

I also pasted code into my project in the following files and adapted as needed. Please see inside files for license info.

  • src/screen.h - Example OLEDs based on SSD1306 - Limor Fried/Ladyada
  • src/rotator.h - New Rotary Encoder Debounce - by Yvan / https://Brainy-Bits.com
  • src/leds.h - adapted from FastLED example
  • src/gamma8.h - found in FastLED examples
  • src/button.h - adapted from http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Debounce
  • src/bme680.h - adapted Adafruit BME680 example

Notes