Ear to Ear Networking.

[mrpackethead]

(1) the above show was opening night with the media.. 3000 sets of ears that they gave away.. You normally will buy an own a set of your own ears.. ($24?) which you take away
(4) The ears have both RX and TX capability... - Above you saw them running together, being controlled from elsewhere.. When you leave the show, they will interact with each other.. When you come close to another set of ears they will flash to each other..

I wished i'd come up with this idea!

[lightman]

Thanks. Impressed that each has unique code.

Regards,
Lightman

[mrpackethead]

yes, very handy for tracking you around the park... :-)

[budude]

Nothing new - they already can track cell phones/tablets now. Many airports do this without you even knowing it. They use it for congestion flow analysis...

[cnbales]

It would be very neat to make a hat with a Christmas tree on it that the same properties to it as these mouse ear hats. When your rgb's changed colors so would the Christmas tree hat or when you had strobes flashing so would your hat. How difficult do you think this would be?

[mrpackethead]

@Cnbales.. Not so hard at all;

Just need some big IR flood lights that you can modulate..

[lightman]

I agree with mrpackethead.... I have been researching IR to RS232 communications and there appear to be a few ways to do it.

One method is to use the slower SIR 38KHz modulated tx and rx units. These are a few dollars at RS (#276-0640) or online. These are same ones used in many appliance remote controls. With the 38KHz carrier that eliminates noise and false alarms, the overall Baud rate is pretty slow (~ 5KBaud or a little more) so you would probably send macro commands to the headset's uProc and let it control patterns or sequences from your controllers cues... or very slow dimming info for a few channels.

Second way is to use something like the MAXIM 3130 transceiver chip that runs up to 115KBaud. It runs a few more $$ online. You need to add an IR Photosensor and a few misc parts. Now you could send a reasonable amount of dimming info to the headset that control RGBs or simple LEDs... assuming you had enough battery power.

In my case, I could transmit my entire 38KBaud dimming bus stream to the headset and let it's uProc sniff out many more channels and then control a couple (or more) of my GECE bulbs. I would use some high powered IR LEDs that would use the TX output section of another MAXIM 3130 chip getting feed from my USB dongle. This is still in planning stages... but looking good so far.

I was thinking of making up small necklaces to give to the kids rather than ears. I would multi-broadcast the IR from several stations around the yard into the street. Necklaces would blink and hopefully fade to the music. Would use AAA Alk batteries or a rechargable set. Kids would return necklaces at end of show. Probably make up 5 or 10 necklaces.

Just an idea brewing....

Lightman

[lightman]

Ran some tests tonight with the Radio Shack 276-0640 IR detector/demodulator and an old Mitsubishi remote (with used batteries). Was impressed with sensitivity, distance, and noise rejection. It will work!

I was able to get a distance of 60 ft outside in dark in front of my house with reliable signal detection. Full angle of pickup was 62 deg at a distance of 33 ft (which is the width of our street).

So if I set up about 3 transmitters minimum, equally spaced across my front yard... it will spray the entire street in front of my house and over spray into neighbors yard across the street. I can set up a repeater and spray back towards my display so if kids turn around, the signal is not lost.

I also did some calculations with the timing of the IR Detector (38KHz carrier) and the GECE protocol using a slower Vixen output bus baud rate of 9600 and even 2400 to accomodate the IR detector. All appear to be doable. It takes 820 uSec to send out a frame of GECE data (addr, Intensity, Red, Blue, Green). I can easily accomodate 2 pixel nodes (or up to ~ 4 pixels). I just have to decide on the headset design (ears or necklace).

I can even duplicate addr and add more bulbs...only limited by battery capacity. Each pixel worst case draws ~ 60 mA. A few AAA batteries can handle a few pixels and the controller SX processor (it draws a few mAs). Again this is rough order of magnitude... but the numbers are checking out.

I brought up an old sequenced song "Amazing Grace" and added 2 necklace pixels (6 channels) programmed them up and assigned them to a new output port running at 9600 or 2400 baud... still deciding. May use two more channels for bulb intensity in addition to the RGB colors.

May run tests tomorrow with 2 pixels and batteries to make sure that can be done.

FYI...
Lightman

[rjchu]

Not that it was ever in doubt, but I can confirm #4. I was in line for Radiator Springs Racers in the new Cars Land and saw these ears that all appeared to be doing their own thing but as soon as they took two sets and set them down side by side (so they wouldn't fly away during the ride) they started pulsing colors slowly in unison. Which got me thinking, I know these are pretty new but...does anyone know the coding for these? We're close enough to Disneyland that it's feasible that more than several of these would be owned in our area and it'd be interesting to advertise that they sync to our house and see how many people show up.

Thanks,

-joni-

(1) the above show was opening night with the media.. 3000 sets of ears that they gave away.. You normally will buy an own a set of your own ears.. ($24?) which you take away
(2) The ears are controlled by Infrared
(3) Each set of ears is uniquely coded.
(4) The ears have both RX and TX capability... - Above you saw them running together, being controlled from elsewhere.. When you leave the show, they will interact with each other.. When you come close to another set of ears they will flash to each other..

I wished i'd come up with this idea!

[djulien]

Ran some tests tonight with the Radio Shack 276-0640 IR detector/demodulator and an old Mitsubishi remote (with used batteries). Was impressed with sensitivity, distance, and noise rejection. It will work!

I think that's why they use 38 KHz for IR remotes - good range and sensitivity.

Cool idea!

You could also make something like a little IR SSR mini-PCB that could be connected to another prop such as a necklace, hat with mini-tree or a few nodes, etc. Maybe put a 6- or 8-pin uC on there to decode the IR signal and trigger some hard-coded sequence fragments to run the lights connected to it in various ways (so you only need to send it a few bytes). You could actually run an entire GECE string or other smart pixel string that way since they only take 1 or 2 I/O lines. However, to run a whole string I guess you would need to put some batteries in a backpack or something.

don