Hi. I’m working on an Arduino Garage Parking Assistant with FastLED and wanted to know if anyone had an led patterns ideas or input that could work well. I did this test based on DemoReel using a Nano, an ultrasonic sensor & a WS2812B strip. But maybe a Matrix would work better? Thx & sorry for the shaky cam!
I would keep it simple and more obvious. At least to start with, you can always make it more exciting later. You could cut the strip in half and stack them if you wanted a bit more concentration of light. Putting a light diffuser about 15mm in front of the pixels could help make a more solidly filled display area light up.
What initially popped into my mind was something like this quick pulse followed by steady on:
Depending on how sensitive and the range of your ultrasonic sensor you could have it translate the distance to stopping point into a variable width of pixels lighting up. So after an initial fast pulse, maybe the strip fills up until you’re at the correct stopping distance. A nice pattern idea here:
It could give you a different pulse pattern or go split color pattern when you hit your final parking position. A slight hue shift over distance could be a fancy addition also.
Once it’s been triggered and the distance sensor isn’t measuring change any more (ie you’re in the correct spot and you’ve stopped) it could fade out after some number of seconds.
You might also consider having one pixel on the end always slowly pulsing 24/7 so you know the system is on/working. That way you won’t keep driving forward expecting it to signal you to stop, but suddenly discover it’s not working when you hit something.
That’s a cool project.
+1 for @marmil 's suggestion to start simple.
Once you translate the changing distance into input that FastLED can use, your options are almost endless. If it was mine (and I’m thinking I might steal a lot of your work once you’re done) I would have it start green and transition to red the closer I got. Maybe a rapid blink once you hit the “danger point”.
Now I’m starting to dream… In my two-car garage it would also be cool if it could help me keep the cars in the correct left-right position to allow ease of access when they’re both parked.
Fun and practical project!
Thx @marmil & @allanGEE I was thinking Green, Yellow, Red and then Pulsing Red. I have some ideas in my head on how the animate the leds similar to the 2nd link Marc posted, but have to figure out how to translate that into Fastled code.
Something like this, where it changes from Green to Yellow to Red as you get closer: https://youtu.be/RT3y3_OgKU8?t=43s
@Rich_Plakas : I would like to recommend that you consider using a WS2812b 24 pixel ring along with a RadioShack project enclosure for this project. There should be enough room in the box for all of your components except the power supply. I have a ring mounted on the outside of a RadioShack project enclosure in my office and it looks nice.
You can mirror half of one side of the ring to the other. I would go like others suggested with green when the detector sees the car, then yellow and finally red. You can program in different flashing rates at key distances from the wall.
@Ken_White I like this idea too. I have some 8 pixel rings I can prototype with and then move to the 24 pixel rings. Do you have any code I can check out?
@Rich_Plakas : Here is some old code of mine showing how to use CRGBSet on a 24 pixel ring:
You need to change the pixel numbers of each CRGBSet for your smaller ring.
I started working on doing what I mentioned to you and I should have something to share with you by tomorrow evening which will mirror animations on a ring.
Also, your tent looks great. Can you share that code?
@Ken_White thanks for sharing! The tent was just running DemoReel100 on an Arduino Nano. It worked out good because it was reflecting off the metal support poles and then diffusing with the tent fabric. It was one 4 meter WS2812B strip.
@Rich_Plakas : please see the following sketch:
This illustrates two functions that show how the ring would look when in green (first detected), yellow ( when getting closer to the wall) and red (to stop). This is for a 24 pixel ring. Change the yellow numbertofill to 1, 2, and 3 and the NUM_LEDS to 8 for your smaller ring. This illustrates the different looks when a car gets close to the wall. I will look into using memcopy to improve the sketch later in the week. FYI, it looks nice on my 24 pixel ring.
You will need to use if else or switch case to set the various animations using these functions based on values from your detector.
Wow, I did not realize that your tent sketch was the DemoReel100 sketch. It looks great!
Thanks! I will check out your code. This is where I got today: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOaTNWAcbWvmRHxmm8WYRnueDc2bpai3Wmn5_tqidxfrGvNjB9l7oxpvWqj_AvxNw?key=WVNROFRlUjVZSmJGbTNGN0pMeE1BWkpGT0c3OEJ3
Modified your code a little @marmil https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGhac9t1-RxjZIWk9Uda25BWE6sHa8U38cYuDgva6lIBb91DX6nd8Zq707o4PaYQ?key=OHU2OWRfREZpYnBIc0s5Y2JoRWh4UlIxbHdTVFhB
I do like the ring better than the strip…looks like I need to order a few 24 pixel versions!