Hi guys,
I'm looking for help testing and writing "arduino" code for some cool LED lights on the bottom of quads. The idea is to have a small PCB that can take input from RC channels and interpret mavlink messages. Then you can place smart LED strips (neoPixel or WS2812B) on each arm of the quad and always see your direction or battery power etc. You could just make a cool nightime light show or flash all LEDs white when auto Landing. With these LEDs each one can either be on/off or any color at any brightness. Each LED is individually controllable.
I'm hoping some people will be interested to help me develop this product. It's open source, open hardware, open everything. I've done the heavy lifting and made all the hardware, but I'm looking for help writing the software side. It's not difficult, but I need ideas and people to test. Here are some pics of the LED strips and controller. The LED strips have 20 LEDs each and can be cut to any shorter length or joined together to make them longer, though on my 680mm quad, these are the longest I could fit.
If you are interested, let me know and let's see if we can make some cool LED lights!
Replies
I haven't touched this project in a while. I got my lights working (non Mavlink) and there was no interest no I dropped it. I did a fair bit of work reading mavlink messages trying to get telemetry data on my radio from the pixhawk. Reading it isn't hard, there is an arduino library and it's serial. What do you want to do with the messages?
Hi Brian. How far did you get with this project? I've just found it. I'm flying some ws1812 LEDs on my quad, controlled by a nano, but I never got as far as reading mavlink messages (which was always my intention) I'd be happy to give your code a test, and possibly contribute back if you are still interested.
I hadn't added images inline. I'm wondering if it wasn't clear the hardware was done and working. All the software pieces are there, just need to try it on some planes. Anyway, hope to find some interested testers :D Thanks!