Boris Bikes Update – PHP tweaks and the Finished poster

The initial php scripts that we used just outputted the following HTML code:

echo "light1=".$map_station[0]['percentage'];
echo"E\n";
echo "light2=".$map_station[1]['percentage'];
echo"E\n";
echo "light3=".$map_station[2]['percentage'];
echo"E\n";
echo "The time is:";
echo"\n";
echo time();
echo"\n";

The arduino would search through this HTML text and retrieve the integer in between “light1=” and “E” and then push it to the shift register.

Once we were happy with the circuit, Raj modified the code so that we retrieve the bike stations information, worked out how full the station is as a percentage and the mapped that value to the array below.

$lightset_conf[0]="00000000"; //Empty
$lightset_conf[1]="00100000"; //0-20%
$lightset_conf[2]="00110000"; //21-40%
$lightset_conf[3]="00111000"; //41-60%
$lightset_conf[4]="00111100"; //61-80%
$lightset_conf[5]="00111110"; //81%+


Raj

With the modifications to the PHP and the circuit mounted, we finally managed to see the full poster working.

Posted: November 5th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes Update – Mounting Problems

Mounting has proved to be a bit more difficult than first anticipated. Mounting the circuits, arduino and wifly sheilf has been relatively straightforward (Velcro!), but the lights have caused issues due to the fact that they need to be set back from the surface of the board. We’ve decided to use a putty that you shape and bake to hold the LEDs in place.

Here is the final prototype, all mounted, and messy.

Posted: October 30th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes Update – Build the prototype

After laying it down and outlining the circuit, I can start to build the prototype circuit.

The first thing is to prepare the 12V LEDs, for the design dimensions we have, we can see that we are going to modify the LED bars to have 2 LEDS instead of 3, and that we are going to have 5 rows per light set (originally we had planned for 8).

Next is the build of the control aspect of the circuit, ie 3 shift registers (74HC595′s) that talk to the Arduino chip, each shift register then uses p1-5 to control the relays which dictate when the 12V LEDs should be lit.

The final part of the circuit is the 12v, a collection of relays, and power lines:

Now it just needs to be connected and mounted.

Posted: October 25th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes Update – The Design

Andy’s printed design has arrived with both a yellow and white background, which we can lay down on the frame backing board and get the dimensions for the circuit.

Decided to lay down the white version and cut that up.

After laying it down and outlining the circuit, we can see that we are only going to be able to use five rows of LEDs for each set of lights and will also need to cut the number of columns on the LED bars from 3 to 2.

Posted: October 22nd, 2010 under Uncategorized - 1 Comment.

Boris Bikes Update – Proof of Concept

Before building the full prototype circuit, I created a small circuit to test my shift registers.

The idea is that each of the leds will be replace by either a transistor or relay that will control the power flowing through the 12v LEDs, see the image below.

The Arduino chip is running an example sketch that counts from 1 to 255 and displays the number in binary on the led bar graph. Our final sketch will be using the same circuit but the number it pushes into the shift register will be based on bikes available in one of the stations.

Posted: October 21st, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes Update – Parts list

The concept behind the circuits a fairly simple one, but we made it a little bit more complicated by our choice of LEDs.

Here is the shopping list so far:

1 x Arduino chip
1 x Sparkfun Wifly sheild
30 x 12v White LED Bars
3 x 8-Bit – Shift Registers – 74HC595
30 x 5v Relays
1 x Fixed voltage regulator
1 x AC to 12v Power adaptor and connectors.
Plus the usual wire, solder etc.

Posted: October 17th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes Update – Data scrape

Thankfully the first part of our project has already been done, Adrian Short has created a script that scrapes the TFL site every minute and makes the bike station data available in Json and XML formats, check out his code here.

Meanwhile – Andrew Broughton (AKA Digifingers) has been tasked with creating the design.

Posted: October 16th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Boris Bikes – Setup

Each month at Saint Chris Jefford (our innovations director), gets one of our illustrators to visualise their take on a month at Saint (see the old ones here). This month there has been a lot of talk about the Boris Bikes that were launched over the summer, and Chris decided that he would like to integrate this into this months illustration. How? By taking data from the TFL site and showing how many bikes are free in our area.

So there are essentially three parts to the project:

• Take data from the TFL site
• Convert it into a value that Arduino can read.
• Build a circuit that will light up in accordance with with the scraped data.

Posted: October 15th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

I Kipros Konta Sas – Κωστας Πουλακας

Scroll to five minutes to see ol pappou speaking

Posted: February 10th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.

Kasabian football hero

I’ve seen a few youtube videos of people pulling apart their guitar hero and rock band kits to find new ways to play the game but the guys promoting the new Kasabian album have modded it so that its almost impossible to play unless your a world class freestyle footballer.

Posted: October 28th, 2009 under Uncategorized - No Comments.