Hello together,
I am always looking for already asked questions, but this time I will pull myself together and directly ask for advice.
I am still relatively new to microcontroller projects and would be happy about any help and suggestions for my large project
The plan is to create a wall mounted installation out of textile (felt) that looks like a kind of moss patch with led flowers. the flowers are felted with conductive wool to also function as capacitive sensor (this works and was already tested)
The simplified aim is the following interaction behaviour:
-if nobody is close to the flowerpatch, LED glows with its standard animation
-if somebody approaches the Flowerpatch, LED glows brighter
-if somebody approached for long enough and touches the flowers, start new excited led animation
-if somebody touches the flowers too fast, LED extinguishes and waits some time, before it goes back to standard
So the flowers are kind of "shy" and want to be approached slowly, to permit any touch.
Right now, I create small prototypes with single sensors etc, but I realize I will have to make a structured plan to make it work in big and wanted some advice before I run into unnecessary problems.
I discovered that Teensies allow a more performative touch-sensing function with only 1 Pin through the TouchRead function, and bought a Teensy 3.2, which allows to hook-up up to 12 sensors. I am using single (not strip) adressable RGB LEDs (WS2812) in combination with the FastLED library. I understood I will have to power the LEDs externally, connecting the teensy and the leds to a common power supply. I will connect it to a wall plug with a 5V DC converter to have a good solid common ground for the capacitive touch.
Now I have following questions:
1) My Idea would be to have 1 Teensy Controller connected to 12 sensorpatches + LEDs (maybe up to 10 LEDs per sensor). Will it be a problem, that one single controller controls 12 sensors and the correspondant behaviour of the LEDs for each sensor? Will it just be too slow when managing 12 sensors with their behaviours for the LEDs? Or do you have an idea for a code structure which would allow to run this smoothly? I understood I should avoid any delay() and probably use asynchronous (poll based) touch sensing (https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/5452...)-touch-sensing?highlight=asynchronous+touch)
2) I tried to manipulate the sensitivity of the touchRead() function as explained here: https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/33517-Changing-sensitivity-of-touchRead()
But I couldn't see any difference when changing NSCAN CURRENT or PRESCALE...
3) I would like to add a sound to this all. So there would be quite simple atmospheric music, which has to be of relatively good quality.
So basically if one of the Flowers "hides", the volume is reduced by a certain amount. I understand it is possible with the Audio library (https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html)
Is there a possibility to integrate small speakers into it all? Do I have to hook it all to a sound system with audio jack? (I have to admit, I am unexperienced in audio, I am more the visuals type of creator) Will it take too much computing power, so that I have to manage audio with an additional microcontroller?
4) Do I have to use a logic level converter to address the LEDs, as the Teensy works on 3,3V and the LEDs on 5V? Right now it seems to work with a few LEDs without it, but I imagine it will create problems with more LEDs?
Here is an image which shows one such flowerpatch (12 are planned to be spread on a surface of about 1,5m x 1m) and the connections from the side.
I know that are a few questions and a big project, and I would be immensely grateful for any help and advice on any point.
Thank you very much
I am always looking for already asked questions, but this time I will pull myself together and directly ask for advice.
I am still relatively new to microcontroller projects and would be happy about any help and suggestions for my large project
The plan is to create a wall mounted installation out of textile (felt) that looks like a kind of moss patch with led flowers. the flowers are felted with conductive wool to also function as capacitive sensor (this works and was already tested)
The simplified aim is the following interaction behaviour:
-if nobody is close to the flowerpatch, LED glows with its standard animation
-if somebody approaches the Flowerpatch, LED glows brighter
-if somebody approached for long enough and touches the flowers, start new excited led animation
-if somebody touches the flowers too fast, LED extinguishes and waits some time, before it goes back to standard
So the flowers are kind of "shy" and want to be approached slowly, to permit any touch.
Right now, I create small prototypes with single sensors etc, but I realize I will have to make a structured plan to make it work in big and wanted some advice before I run into unnecessary problems.
I discovered that Teensies allow a more performative touch-sensing function with only 1 Pin through the TouchRead function, and bought a Teensy 3.2, which allows to hook-up up to 12 sensors. I am using single (not strip) adressable RGB LEDs (WS2812) in combination with the FastLED library. I understood I will have to power the LEDs externally, connecting the teensy and the leds to a common power supply. I will connect it to a wall plug with a 5V DC converter to have a good solid common ground for the capacitive touch.
Now I have following questions:
1) My Idea would be to have 1 Teensy Controller connected to 12 sensorpatches + LEDs (maybe up to 10 LEDs per sensor). Will it be a problem, that one single controller controls 12 sensors and the correspondant behaviour of the LEDs for each sensor? Will it just be too slow when managing 12 sensors with their behaviours for the LEDs? Or do you have an idea for a code structure which would allow to run this smoothly? I understood I should avoid any delay() and probably use asynchronous (poll based) touch sensing (https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/5452...)-touch-sensing?highlight=asynchronous+touch)
2) I tried to manipulate the sensitivity of the touchRead() function as explained here: https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/33517-Changing-sensitivity-of-touchRead()
But I couldn't see any difference when changing NSCAN CURRENT or PRESCALE...
3) I would like to add a sound to this all. So there would be quite simple atmospheric music, which has to be of relatively good quality.
So basically if one of the Flowers "hides", the volume is reduced by a certain amount. I understand it is possible with the Audio library (https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html)
Is there a possibility to integrate small speakers into it all? Do I have to hook it all to a sound system with audio jack? (I have to admit, I am unexperienced in audio, I am more the visuals type of creator) Will it take too much computing power, so that I have to manage audio with an additional microcontroller?
4) Do I have to use a logic level converter to address the LEDs, as the Teensy works on 3,3V and the LEDs on 5V? Right now it seems to work with a few LEDs without it, but I imagine it will create problems with more LEDs?
Here is an image which shows one such flowerpatch (12 are planned to be spread on a surface of about 1,5m x 1m) and the connections from the side.
I know that are a few questions and a big project, and I would be immensely grateful for any help and advice on any point.
Thank you very much