Otherwise, the Dioder will need a short pulse either from high to low or from low to high, depending on the power control pin’s configuration. This pulse must also come some time after the microcontroller has had a chance to start up. Probably a millisecond or two after power is applied to the circuit. One way to do this would be to mount the AVR circuit as described in this blog entry and program the AVR microcontroller to send this pulse. That’s a bit of overkill though. There are simpler circuits maybe using a 555 timer but the AVR is pretty easy conceptually especially from a programmer’s perspective.

Another option would be to see if your power controller has the capability of sending this pulse. Is it an X10 system?

I’m realy impressed what you did with the dioders. I know a little bit about electronics but actually I am a programmer so like said befor my way of doing is trying and most times it won’t end up good.

I bought the German version of the dioder with three buttons (one for on/off, one for fading the colors and one for jumping through the colors) and a color wheel. I would like to be able to control the dioder with a Remote controlled power plug (I hope that’s what you call it, I’m from Germany). My problem is that every time you disconnect and reconnect the dioder from the powersupply, it is turned off and you need to push the button to turn it on. So my question is how to put it that the dioder is allways on or that it is on by default. I would have no problem if I couldn’t turn it of anymore. I would have the remote control to cut the power.

Do you think there is a way of solving this problem?

Thanks
Flo

My disk was in a img raw format. I used the qemu-img resize storage.img +8GB command. This was working excellent.

I found the example through this article
http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/how-resize-your-kvm-virtual-disk

• #3 is easy the information you need is written on the supply. It says 5W max at 12v that’s 417mA. (W = V x A)
• #2 is probably about 50mA per LED
• #1 is more difficult. Basically it is whatever the three transistors on the driver board are rated to handle. You could try to look up their datasheets.

So you could experiment with how many you can connect together on one controller before either the magic blue smoke comes out or it stops working. However, you’re here because you want to do some real hacking and “let’s just see what happens” works well when writing software but not in electronics which leads me to:

Lemma 1:
The likelihood of letting out the magic blue smoke is directly proportional to ones knowledge in software development.
Therefore, as software development experience tends towards infinity the probability of blue smoke tends to 100%.

Here is what you should really do:

• a) Cut the power trace as described above on two of your three Dioders.
• b) Solder wires on to the green, blue, red and ground pins on all three boards.
• c) Connect all the greens to greens, grounds to grounds etc. across all three devices.
• d) Plug in the power supplies for all three.

Now the controller for which you didn’t cut the power trace will send control signals to the other two. The drive circuitry will not be overloaded because the drivers on each board are still being used with in their limits. The logic signals are being shared not the drive signals. For the same reason the load is balanced across all 3 power supplies.

I recommend you keep the signal wires between the modules as short as possible. However, it will probably work fine up to a few feet.

One warning, I wouldn’t leave just one or two of the devices on and not the others. The devices that are off might draw power off the others over the signal lines. You could also disassemble the power supply modules and connect the AC sides altogether and attach a single two prong plug. Then you could plug the whole thing into one outlet and they all come one at once.

If you get this working post some pictures.

Background info: I am planning to use the three kits in a kitchen I am building for my wife and “WE” really liked the “pretty” colors the Doider creates….well, looking for something else to tinker with and probably looking to make trouble, I bought the three doider kits – each will be used in a logistically separate area in the kitchen. As mentioned above, “we” would like to control the lighting from a single location.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

However was having problems around creating the new partition kept on saying 1st sector to use was 2048…

Anyway figured out it was because default mode for fdisk in Fedora 14 was to use EBR..

And much head scracthing found “c toggle the dos compatibility flag” in fdisk.

Regarding the soldering of small pins. It helps a lot to have the right equipment. A RatShack $15 iron just isn’t going to cut it for fine work. I know a lot of people swear by Weller irons but I really like MetCal. MetCal uses RF technology to automatically adjust the power input to the iron to keep it at the Curie temperature. This means that if you put your tip on a little SMT lead or on a block of iron you’ll always have the right temperature. The cartridge tips are easy to change too. Yes, MetCal irons are expensive but you can get older models and tips on EBay for not too much. The MX-500 goes for as little as $70. That’s a lot more than $15 but it’s well worth it and if you take care of it it will last you a life time of fine soldering.

The other important things are flux and desolder braid. These are cheap and with them you can even do fine work with a $15 RatShack iron if you are careful. Without them you will just burn holes and get yourself all worked up.

Finally, a magnifying lamp is also very helpful.

With these things and some practice you will be soldering like a pro in no time.

I want to thank you for the info you gave me. I’m a beginner with electronics, after your advice and the hack at http://www.meirsman.eu/dioder I decided to just get it on with.

I kind of did the same as Sven Meirsman and solderd 3 connectors on each circuit (like you did on the PIC itself). I first tried -with the help of an extra pair of hands) if it would work like I wanted( just holding a wire from my Arduino Uno to the circuit). Nothing happend sadly enough. I then also connected the ground from the arduino with the ground on the IKEA circuit board. This was a success. I soldered everything together and I had a working hack.

After a few days I must have short-circuited something which fucked up my dioder-PIC. It won’t output any red anymore, the buzzer is also connected to the blue I suppose as the blue flashes a bit when I operate the button.

But everything is well now, my arduino does the job very well and I’m pleased with it. I had this nice Idea of making my own ambilight (altough with only 1 color/area).
Here’s a video of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0EqkGPcwdg

I’m looking into making my own circuit so that I can ditch the ikea circuit and have to seperate channels (for better ambilight). Altough that will have to wait a few weeks as I should be studying for my exams at the moment.

Koen

A little more info. I’m not sure what the PIC does when in off mode. It could pull the lines low or there could be an external pull-down. It is unlikely that they are left floating as that would allow the LEDs to come on. You may be able to override a weak pull-down with the AVR but if the PIC is actually still on driving the lines low then you will have a problem. Try it out and let us know.

Joseph