New Hardware Developer - Putting lights on your homenetwork!

**Mactayl** · 03-03-2012, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by mrpackethead

The internal o/c will drift a bit too much for this job.

I think he should be able to to set the clock rate to 64 MHz and divide down with a stable clock rate since he is using only 4 channels of the PIC,, unless there is something that E1.31 or DMX is needed for critical timing. I may be wrong but I have used the the PIC18FxxKxx devices at 32mhz and 64mhz with no issues using the internal oscillator.

**Ike** · 04-21-2012, 11:09 PM

SUCCESS!!! WOOOOOOOOT. My newest prototype 4 channel board is now fully operational and being control by Vixen over my home network with no errors!

I'm geeking out with my laptop in the living room running Vixen on WiFi and my board plugged into my router in my office.

I still have a lot to do:
1) Refine my vixen plugin and set it up to keep track of multiple boards with a user friendly setup dialog.
2) Refine my pic program so the IP Address can be changed from the Vixen Setup dialog to allow easy setup of multiple boards
3) Layout my version 1.0 eight channel board. This includes adding an on board power supply circuit, 4 more channels, and switching from the surface mount to through-hole version of the Ethernet controller chip to make it fully DIY friendly.

I was so excited when it all came together tonight that I started jumping up and down and had to go share with the world. WOOT! So the first LightWeb Ethernet prototype is working! Working hardware is always a great motivator to keep pushing forward. Hopefully my eight channel v1 board will be ready to go this summer so I can find some volunteer testers.

**budude** · 04-21-2012, 11:18 PM

Nice work - congrats!

**n1ist** · 04-22-2012, 02:56 PM

Looks great!
/mike

**kingofkya** · 04-22-2012, 05:20 PM

Very nice, Now if it had 16 channels i would be sold on it

Still very cool.

Also you might want to look at
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/sto...001_1996330_-1
Since your doing a surface mount anyways, about a 1/4 of the price and its 2 channels.

accely a 1/8 the price as its 2 channles

**Mactayl** · 04-22-2012, 05:26 PM

Very nice looking....

**n1ist** · 04-22-2012, 07:08 PM

That dual opto has transistor output, not triac output, so it won't help much with this design. Not bad for a DC application, though.
/mike

**Ike** · 04-22-2012, 09:28 PM

Originally Posted by kingofkya

Very nice, Now if it had 16 channels i would be sold on it

Still very cool.

The end goal will be to have 8, 16, and 24 channel versions. Maybe even a 32 channel version once those first 3 are made and there is demand for it.

I'm in the process of learning EagleCAD and creating my custom components. Anyone have a library of components for EagleCAD that are typical parts found on light controllers here? Would speed up the process. Otherwise I'll be working on those this week.

**kingofkya** · 04-22-2012, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by n1ist

That dual opto has transistor output, not triac output, so it won't help much with this design. Not bad for a DC application, though.
/mike

I guess is didn't really read that datasheet right. Just thinking he might want to go smd because most of the time the smd stuff is cheaper, and this board might get expensive quick.

Out of curiosity is this DMX over Ethernet or is some other custom protocol.

**Ike** · 04-23-2012, 05:14 PM

Currently this is a custom UDP protocol with associated Vixen Plug-In. The protocol and all my source code will be open source so it could easily be made to work with other programs as well. The hardware may be capable of doing full DMX over Ethernet but I would need to do testing to find out. I'm not sure if the SPI bus between the PIC and the Ethernet controller is fast enough for it. Might be, but no way to know without testing.

I'm trying to keep this board as cheap as possible to be DIY friendly which means trying to keep costs not to much above a comparable Renard or similar board. This limited me in my chip options and why I use an external ENC28J60 Ethernet controller over SPI. It works fantastic for my custom protocol that only sends each board its own channel data in a single UDP packet every event update. However, if I have it correctly, DMX over Ethernet sends out every channel in a Universe to every board which would be a lot more data to have to ship across that SPI bus for the PIC to sort through. So this is why I'm starting out with a custom protocol.