r-IOT day
A roundup of events from the special Internet Of Things themed ribot day.
ribot day is a day where the whole team — developers, designers and managers — get the opportunity to work together to skill up on new things. Welcoming special guest Seb Lee-Delisle into the studio, the August ribot day was a day full of electronics-fueled experiments, collaboration and fun. With an end goal in mind — to build a prototype of a digital wine cabinet concept — we spent the day playing with Raspberry Pis.
Seb runs a 2 day workshop, catchily named ‘ST4iJS’, which he delivered to us in a very condensed form over a morning to enable us time to build the prototype. The day kicked off with a short presentation from Seb giving an overview of the capabilities and structure of a Raspberry Pi, along with some examples of how the tiny computers have been used in the real world. It was a topic newer to some than others, but interesting to all.
Seb had brought a stack of little black cases containing electronic delights and distributed them amongst the team. We each excitedly unclipped the clasps to find them jam packed with little plastic bags filled with various electronic goodies including colourful wires, lights, resistors, NeoPixels, a breadboard, a logic converter and of course a Raspberry Pi Zero. For some of the team this was a first venture into the Internet of Things, electronics and using the command line, so Seb covered the basics, taking us through how to setup the Pi and making sure everyone was able to rename their personal Pi and connect it to the WiFi network.
Then came our first challenge — to make an LED light flash! Using the Fritzing app to guide us with visual diagrams, we each tried (and succeeded) to connect our LED light to the Pi with the correct positioning of wires. Using some code which Seb had kindly pre-installed on SD cards which slotted into the Pi, we each were able to run a program to make our lights flash. Although a simple first accomplishment, an accomplishment none the less and the team were enthused and raring to move on to further experiments.
After a quick ‘Instagram break’ and trip to the shop to stock up on Jaffa Cakes, Caramel wafers and coffee, we carried on. Having already managed to light up a single LED, we advanced to light up a strip of NeoPixels. This strip of lights required the addition of a logic converter and more wires to our breadboards and, using another program pre-installed by Seb, we were able to light the strip with a spectrum of colours.
Feeling accomplished, it was time for lunch — a Deliveroo delivery from Itsu, enjoyed by all on the ribot terrace with a nice accompaniment of fresh air and sunshine.
With the morning’s Raspberry Pi intro under our belts, we were able to turn our attention towards our main goal — building the prototype. We wanted to create a wine cabinet with a digital catalogue for the user to browse. From the catalogue, the user could make a selection and see their choices lit up in the cabinet.
For the afternoon, we split ourselves into two teams: software and hardware. The software team were to develop a simple program to enable a specified segment of a strip of NeoPixels to light up, and link it to an interface which would allow a user to select a segment. The hardware team were to affix NeoPixels to each shelf of a bookcase — the ‘cabinet’ — and wire them up to a Raspberry Pi, using a soldering iron to improve its durability. The teams would then join together their efforts to create the finished prototype.
The software team divided themselves further, playing to team strengths to get a working product by the end of the day. We built a simple iPad app to provide the catalogue interface from which the user could make their selection, and adapted the code from the morning to only light up a specified portion of the length of lights. The iPad app communicated with the lights program running on the Pi through sockets over WiFi.
The hardware team were shown the correct way to use a soldering iron and each did some practice soldering to perfect the technique before moving on to the ‘real thing’. Taking the mornings experiments a step further, the wires and logic board were soldered into a more sturdy prototype board. A number of NeoPixel strips were also cut up and soldered together to make a length long enough to cover each wine shelf.
Towards the end of the day, the teams came together and put the SD card containing the code the software team had worked on into the solder-enhanced prototype Pi. We ran a test and taa-daa the correct section of lights lit up!
Having successfully tested the prototype, it was time to attach it to the bookcase. At first only with masking tape (prototype!) we attached a length of NeoPixels to each shelf. Placing a couple of wine bottles onto the shelf, we stepped back and admired our day’s work.
Despite the slightly underwhelming appearance of ‘a bookshelf with lights hanging off’, our concept was proven and we were able to justify dedicating further time towards tidying the thing up into a more solid, polished and working prototype. A final version is in the works and may be seen out in the wild in the near future!
We ribots love trying out new things. If you’ve played with your own experiments using the Raspberry Pi, we’d be really interested to see what you came up with! Or if you think there is something we really must try out, let us know.
