First let me give a little background:
My father retired some years ago from Civil Service as an electronics technician. I am blessed to have received and passed on this “tinkerer” gene to my own son. Anyway shortly after retiring my father was stricken with Parkinson’s disease and over the years it has ravaged his brain and body (choking a little here). He is now relegated to minimal functionality but one of the things he said to me a few years ago is, “I’m still in here.” Now he spends his days in his chair with his technical mind dying to get out. My mother has noticed that every time he gets near anything with knobs, buttons, switches, or lights he seems to “come alive” tinkering with whatever. My mom has learned not to leave anything electronic within his reach as he will quickly disassemble it to its smallest parts. As a result of this my mom has asked me to build him something to tinker with. And that’s where this forum comes in:
I want to build him a small clear plastic enclosure with a 9v battery and an Arduino with as many buttons, switches, leds, etc. as I can fit on say a 6 inch by 6 inch enclosure that actually do something. i.e. flip a switch and aan led lights, turn a knob and it dims, flip another switch and it flashes, as well as anything else I can make an Arduino do inside a box. He has tons of electronics parts and junk in his workshop (which he hasn’t been able to get to in years) so I have access to all kinds of pots, buttons, switches, leds, meter movements, and just about anything else. I want to load down EVERY pin on an Uno or Leonardo that I can. I even have a mega2560 if this gets out of hand.
I’m looking for ideas as detailed as you want to give. This is a chance for us to “give back” to one of our own. If this gets big I plan on making a “big deal” about it. As big as I can. Help me show my dad that the “tinkerers” love him.
Thanks,
Russ Lewis
Let me clarify a little here. I’m not talking about something he can tear apart. I plan on it being something he can operate without breaking. It doesn’t have to have any real purpose, it just needs to react and stimulate. The functions can be random or specific it doesn’t matter. He’s a strong man so preferably nothing too flimsy. I’ve ordered a battery level indicator www.sparkfun.com/products/11087 to let my mom know when to change the battery. I also plan on adding a relay that will power off the whole thing after 5 minutes of input inactivity just in case he falls asleep. I’ve heard there was a sleep or low power mode for the arduino but I’ve never used it. Don’t know if it would be better. Not sure what wakes it up when it sleeps.
Thanks again,
Russ
I will try and think about a series of circuits that wont interfere with each other that can be hardwired inside the box,that can represent different basic logic gates and switches. Probably for his own perception and enjoyment, the employment of as many electro-mechanical relays hard mounted to the enclosure as possible can let him feel the tactile reactions of the circuits as he presses the buttons. I will post more ideas on this as they come.
There’s a lot of possibilities here. Would a game of lights and sounds, like a Simon, be useful or frustrating ? Would a box that allows him to draw on a TV (used as a display) be useful ? Is he still able to communicate or would some aid be useful ? That is, is the mind still there but the body unable to convey the thoughts through the usual methods ? If so what can he control ? Or has dementia, at some level, set in ? WRG to use of his hands, my guess from your post is that the shakes aren’t so bad he can’t turn a knob or press a button w/o it being frustrating.
What I’m trying to assess is whether something more than a box’o’lights that stimulates the base senses is desired. Something that allows some intellect to be used and hopefully amused and stimulated.
Truth is this is something I should have done sooner. This disease moves so slow for so long and then one day you realize that it’s like an exponential snowball. A year ago I would have thought this project to be too menial or degrading. Now I’m not so sure. Sadly Simon might be a little more than his dexterity can withstand. Case in point my mom pushed his Hoyer lift (she uses it to lift him in and out of bed, she’s way too frail and he’s still 180 lbs though he looks skin and bones) over beside his chair and he stayed “entertained” for hours feeling at the bolts and machinery of it and running it up and down with the remote. He’s still in there but he’s fading faster now than ever before. This won’t save him but it will keep his mind on who he is and who he was. I gotta move fast on this for obvious reasons.
My answer I guess is that his intellect is still in there but he’s less and less able to show it day by day.
Also the shakes have never been a part of his disease and as such it is classified more as Parkinsonian syndrome. He first noticed it in 1992 when his arm would “ratchet” when he would turn a screwdriver. Dementia has set in though it’s hard to determine if that’s caused so much by the disease or the powerful meds which list hallucinations as their side effects.
My box is 6" x 4.5" x 2" black with a clear Plexiglas top. Great thing is, this was one of his project boxes he used once. I think he had a power supply or battery charger built in it. He would build a battery charger with a light bulb and spare parts in everything we owned that used batteries.
Would you be adverse to building a few, say 3, different “boxes”, to see what he likes and doesn’t ? Perhaps recycling them as they fall from his favor ? There’s so many ideas and no way to assess which would be “best”. For example you could use one of these displays to make a game of sorts.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/683
https://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/im … trix-0.jpg
Four buttons, one at each side of the above, act as controllers. Another selector switch could set color, another size (number of LEDs on) with the idea being that one or more LEDs are lit and move across the matrix. The side buttons control the direction and/or could be used to enable a “rebound” from that side (think old Pong game). You could have several modes/games set by another switch. A piezo speaker and a small pager motor (w/eccentric still attached) could add sound and vibe effects to the box.
If physical motion is what attracts him then perhaps a box with some servos that control a robotic arm could be made. You could use some rotary encoders with (or w/o) the fancy display as input device(s). Or perhaps a joystick ?
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10407
https://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/im … 407-05.jpg
Or maybe a variation on the control cube I saw at HaD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl … yGQ1oQidBs
In your case rotating the cube might induce a different effect (light, sound, vibe) within the cube depending on which side ended up. Perhaps differing rotations might do something different (differing vibe frequency or color or sound frequency or …).
In any case you might want to think about incorporating rechargeable batteries inside the “box” rather than a removable 9V. The latter might not last very long and coming up with a tinker-proof door might be vexing for your mother to use.
Here’s another idea, or part of one. If screwing things in and out is his fancy, you could captivate some differing screws and bolts such that they screw/drive into the box and when bottomed out (or nearly so) some action (lights, sound, vibe) happens. Same thing as they as driven out but a different action when they “top” out. Epoxy a nut to the bottom of the bolt or screw so that can’t come all the way out of the box. Now that might mean letting him have some tools your mother may rather not let him have … but it’s an idea if he likes that type of action. Simple switches in the box can be tied into the Arduino to trigger the actions.
How about a box of gears ? Just an electric motor driving a long series of gears, ideally with some variation in type and color and construction. Perhaps throw in a belt drive as well. Have some controls for on/off and speed and direction. Make it complex enough to require some time to figure which gear drives which, but without any hidden parts so it can be figured out. You wouldn’t even need an Arduino.
I bought the matrix and the led ring. I already have the breakout https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11040, the knob https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10597 and the RGB encoder https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10982 Last night I used some of his parts to add a row of 24 leds across the bottom of the Plexiglas faceplate (8 green, 8 yellow, 8 red) also added a SPDT pushbutton and an on-off-on pin switch. I think we’ve hit the limits of the UNO or the Leonardo. Multiple boxes sounds good. I also bought this hand size enclosure https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8632. Am I going to need a driver for the matrix and or the LED row? I’ve also ordered the 5 way switch https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10541. Looks like the mega2560 maybe. The gear box would be nice but not many laying around that I know of.
Thanks Again.
Oh and BTW I’m now the age my dad was in my avatar picture. That was about 25 years ago.
I’ve managed to screw-up my editing of this post so I’m starting it anew. As to a driver for the matrix … yes you will need something unless you want to dedicate 32 pins to it. The scheme below was on the product page and it’s the best way I can see with ATM.
http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/0 … ed-matrix/
http://tronixstuff.files.wordpress.com/ … ticss2.jpg
I can think of a slightly simpler variation of the above scheme but that’s about it for driver solutions that come to (my) mind.
Other suggested solutions (on the product page) won’t work if you want to use all 3 (R,G,B) LEDs.
As for the LED “strip” … I assume you mean the circular bargraph pictured below. The BoB you bought has the needed decoder/driver ICs on it.
https://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/im … 4_i_ma.jpg
For all sorts of gears and mechanical stuff you might want to look at ServoCity. I know another regular poster here has another good source for gears and such, I just can’t recall the vendor ATM.
http://www.servocity.com/html/motors___accessories.html
http://www.servocity.com/html/mechanica … ories.html
Last night I used some of his parts to add a row of 24 leds across the bottom of the Plexiglas faceplate (8 green, 8 yellow, 8 red)
Upon rereading the above post I think I now understand what you meant by a driver for the "row". If you had enough pins you could forgo the driver but that's a bit of a waste of pins. So 3 shift registers (as is used in the driver for the matrix) would do the trick. With 24 LEDs I don't know if there's a better, simpler, cheaper alternative. Perhaps a single MAX72xx might work if the LEDs can be arranged as 8 reds (w/a common cathode), 8 greens (w/a common cathode), 8 blues (w/a common cathode) ??
Its funny you should include the drawing from tronixstuff. I have been redrawing it in eagle while I wait for the parts to arrive. I just duplicated the shift register arrangement above above to drive my other LEDs. To save on components I got some ULN2803As with heatsinks for the transistors and some DIP resistor arrays for all those 560 ohm resistors.
My simplifying suggestion re: that design was going to eliminate the transistors and their base resistors. What’s lost is that you can’t have all the LEDs in a row on at the same time. The shift register, w/o the transistor, can’t handle the current. So the code would have to scan across the columns, or better yet, across the colors (do R then G then B). This would require more resources from the Uno and the display would of course be dimmer as a result but perhaps those would be acceptable tradeoffs for simplifying the hardware design. And given the duty cycle you could drive the LEDs harder than their nominal SS current to (partially) make up for the loss of brightness.
My thinking for your 24 LEDs goes along the same lines. The MAX72xx chip(s) are made to drive the 7 segments plus decimal point (= 8 LEDs) for up to 8 digits. The “plan” would be to connect the anodes of an RGB triplet to a single segment driver pin. Since there are 24 LEDs w/8 of each color, there are 8 RGB triplets to connect to the 8 segment pins (7 segments & DP). Then all (8) of the R cathodes are connected to a single decimal driver pin (#1 perhaps). All the G cathodes are connected to the decimal #2 driver pin and the B’s to decimal driver #3 pin. The IC scans across all the “segments” for a “decimal”, lighting up all the R LEDs (one at a time) at first. Then is does the same for decimal #2 which lights up all the G LEDs and then for decimal #3 which lights up the B LEDs. The IC would be set to display only 3 digits as there are only 3 colors. Of course this is done fast enough that you don’t see the flickering. One big expensive IC is still less $$s than 3 'B595s and takes up less board space. Plus the MAX72xx doesn’t require current limiting resistors for each LED.
I wanted to illustrate (partially) the idea I proposed for the 24 LEDs above. So the below diagram is just that. There was a suggestion on the product page that the MAX7219 could also be used to drive the RGB 8x8 matrix you got. At first I thought “yes” and then I rethought it and came to “no” and now I’m almost back to “yes” again. Hence I needed to do this part so I could sleep tonight. :mrgreen:
The wiring for the matrix would need to differ from the below so I’m going to play with it to figure out “yes” or “no” definitively.
(click on to open and enlarge)
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9622
https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Com … AX7221.pdf
RE: using a MAX7219 to drive your RGB 8x8 matrix … NO. It won’t work. A single color 8x8 matrix would.
First I want to say thanks to everyone for all your help and suggestions. Unfortunately Monday night at 7pm my dad lost his battle with Parkinsons. A week prior he had lost his ability to swallow and could not eat or drink anything. He died at home with my mom. He was given full military honors having retired from the Air National Guard and 40 years Civil Service. He will be missed dearly.
Thank You All,
Russ
P.S. I m sorry too that I cannot bring myself to complete this project at this time.
