Yearly Archives: 2009

Sunday night – father's day

Happy fathers day folks..   Thanks to those of you who reached out to me today. I know it seems like days like this would be especially painful.. but really. they are just like every day since sam’s passing.. they have a mix of peace and pain. I think it just brings sam’s passing more into other folks minds..  I appreciate folks thinking about us …

It was a good day for me.. nothing exciting.. I spent the day traveling back from Endicott ny where we were attending my nephew’s graduation party. I began the day with a cohn family tradition .. grape juice and orange juice mixed together.. it gives one super powers…

We had a small father’s day cellibration with my father in law, Gabe.. … I even got a card..   I even got soem lattery tickets to help with college expenses.. hey.. you never know !

I even got a card made for pyro’s like me..

Sam was very much on my mind all day.. as he always is ..

We left endicott around 2pm and headed for Ninghamton to see Diane’s uncle Armond.

We  hadn’t been to see Armond at home for a couple of years. I really like the old neigborhood.. It’s an italian section of binghampton where Diane’s grandmother and family has always lived.   It’s got these cool old bars and bakeries ..

Armond and his wife Marion were outside listening to the baseball game in the  field across the street

Here’s the ball field… I remember when it was a parking lot..

It was really good seeing them. Armond gave us a tour of the place.. it’s two houses In the back Diane’s granparents, and their 6 kids and Diane’s greatgrandmother lived. Diane’s folks lived in the front house for a while.. Diane actually lived there for her first 2 years.

Here’s Diane’s grandmother’s house ..

And her beutiful roses.. Diane has a cutting of those roses growing here in vermont.. they’re beautiful .

The place is also now home to about 19 ferral cats.. these guys are cute !

We got a tour of Diane’s grandmother’s house.. I remember my first vist there 26 years ago.. I remmebr a great thanksgiving dinner.. where most of the good conversations wwere happeing in italian !

Here’s grandma mariano’s old wash machine..

Armond showed us his grandmother’s old trunk from when she came over from Italy .. that would be our kid’s Great-great-grandmother.

It was full of beautiful hand made clotes.. even soem baby swadlings

He then took us into the basement .. I remember it so clearly..   Here are the big casks where Diane’s grandfather used to make wine.. One of them was still half full.

Here’s the old stove where grandma mariano did all of her cooking. I can still remember her pizzelle’s

And here’s Diane’s grandfather’s beer brewing stuff. He (Constantin) married Diane’s Grandmother after his first wife passed away. Diane’s Grandmother Peirinne came to this country after two of her suitors had a duel and one of them killed the other !
She was such a colol and wonderful lady.. always taking care of folks.. always feeding them.. She always used to say to me.. ‘Sta bon’.. “be good’: she always thought I was up to  mischief .

Armond also had an old trunk of his from his time in the army.. 

Inside he had an old IBM Think book form the 40’s !

Here’s Diane’s Granfather’s chair.. he passed away when Diane was just a baby..

We then went up in the attic.. Here Armond is showing us where Marian’s granfather used to make shoes in the early 1900’s..

Then we went into the front house, the house where Diane lived until she was 2.   Here’s her old kitchen ..

Here are soem of Armonds shields from his 28 years as a firefighter..

Armond gsave max his vintage video disk system.. Max was pretty syched to get a hold of that.. It was the first commercial video disk system..

Here’s Diane’s old room.. Check out the floor !

From there we started the 6 hour trip home.. the drive was pretty uneventful.. just long.. We finished the trip by making a celibratory trip across the newly opened Richmond bridge..   The town is reunited !

Now I’m Home. Diane, Gabe and I are in Sam’s room wathing the first Terminator meovie.. A nice close to a good day.. I better watch.. I’ve lost track of the plot. More tomorrow .. Gnite folks.. Nite Sam.. Happy ather’s day.
-me

Saturday night – Our lady of …

We’re in Endicott today for our nephew Vincent’s high school graduation. Today Vincent’s family held a congratulations party for him and his cousin Nolan.. who lives two doors down.

Vincent will be going to Boston University next year to study neuroscience and classics.. now how’s that for a combo ?

Soemone had given Vincent a redbull picture … we took it as a ‘hi’ from Sam.

The party was held in Our Lady of Good Council.. the chucrch Diane’s family has been goign to for years.. We used to call it Our Lady of the Railroad Tracks… because.. that’s how I remember how to find it.

Anyway.. it was fun sneakign around a church when no one was looking.. it was very beautiful and quiet.  

I guess the catholouc schools here compete in sports liek any other school district.. I liekd their names.. This one, obviously..

This one is kind of poetic….

Now this  one might be a challenge for a sports team… what kind of cheer would you imagine ?

Struggle today….
Struggle tomorrow
Fight like the devil
Our lady of Sorrows  !

It was  a fun and peaceful day.. and it continues to be… I’m goign to sit and watch a movvie on TV .. I don’t know when the last time I did that.. What are you goign to do ?
ite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

Thrusday night – Get the LED out

Friends,
    OK… I know that some of you may be getting sick of the story about my light up headband…   but.. l’d really appreciate it if you can take a minute to go check out my Too Cool Rainbow Headband Project entry in the Instructables ‘Get the LED Out contest’ . If you like the project, please vote for it .. and any other projects you like there.. ( It’s OK.. they said it was OK to promote your own entries)  

It’s easy to become an Instructables member so you can vote.. What’s

more.. if you’re anything like me, you’ll absolutely love

Instructables. It’s one of the best DIY sites there is !
I’m sorry to be self-promoting here.. but the prizes in this contest are just too cool… They’re giving away cool blinky lights !.. MUST…. HAVE… MORE… COOL.. BLINKY… LIGHTS… MUST…. HAVE… MORE… COOL.. BLINKY… LIGHTS… MUST…. HAVE… MORE… COOL.. BLINKY… LIGHTS…

OK.. that’s the last thing I’ll say about that contest .. no wait.. it’s the second to last..

Last night something really cool happened. The story about how I ran into Xander H at Makerfaire.. and how that lead to our collaboration made it to the front of HackaDay.com yesterday..  Hackaday is one of my three favorite Geek Do it yourself blogs.. You gotta understand, that’s like getting on the cover of Rolling Stones for me.  That story linked to a more complete story on Synoptic’s.com What I really liked is the way Xander tells the story of the meeting coincidence.. it’s almost poetic 🙂
He even gave a plug for my Rainbow Headband entry in the contest (did I mention the contest ? 🙂 )

I guess that’s all for tonight… more manana.. nite folks.. nite Sam
-me

ps. Here’s the story from Synoptics website.. it reads liek a good mystery..

Adressable RGB LED Strip

RGB LED Strip
Recently I’ve been playing with something I think is somewhat of a

holy grail in LED enthusiast circles: the addressable RGB LED strip.

Non-addressable RGB strip (meaning you can turn the whole strip a

particular color but not any individual LED) is becoming easier to find

in the market but a RGB strip where you can actually control each LED

individually has only been the subject of geek fantasy. Every time I’ve

done something public with common RGB strip, someone has come up to me

and said “oh wow man, can you control those LED’s individually?”. No,

sorry, with those strips you couldn’t — but with this strip you can!

So where do these fabled strips come

from? Well, the one I’ve been playing with fell into my lap a few

months ago — tossed there by my friend Dan who got it from a

shady-looking factory in China while there evaluating LED video wall

products. I’ve asked him for the name of the factory but he’s so far

been drawing a blank.

At the time he assumed (as did I when I first saw it) that the strip

consisted nothing more of RGB LED’s hooked up to standard standard

shift registers, similar to how I built my single-color LED serial strip. This turns out not to be the case and that the chips driving the LED’s are actually packed with a bit of smarts to them.

This became evident when I built a simple test program which treated

the strip like a common shift register but failed in confounding ways

to work. Eventually I had to cut away some of the silicone liner on the

strip to get a closer look at the driver chip. The chip turned out to

be a “HL1606″, nothing I’d ever heard of. A few hours of online

research left me with a datasheet for the HL1606 written only in

Chinese and a single posting by one “John Cohn” from September 2007

looking for anybody who had more information on how to drive the chip.

The posting didn’t get any useful replies.

I tried running the datasheet through Google translate which was

somewhat successful but left me scratching my head over the precise way

to interpret sentences like this:

When a data bit for the Road 10 (D2D1 or D4D3 or D6D5)

and latches valid, the corresponding LED driver output state for

Prescribed changes gradually, when the change to keep the brightest

light of the state, until the new data is entered and effective latch.

It *sounds* like english, right? Yeah, anyways, trying to decipher

the datasheet lasted for only so long before I got pulled away to more

important distractions and the RGB strip sat on my bench untouched for

months.

Then Maker Faire happened and, by some freak chance, while I was chatting to people about the MonkeyLectric

bike wheels, a guy came by wearing a most eye-catching headband. The

headband was constructed out flexible circuit board material on which

RGB LEDs were mounted and were clearly being controlled individually.

Obviously, this was a guy I had to talk to. After a short conversation

I learned that he had found the strip from an electronics booth in

China, the strip was built using HL1606 driver chips, and he too had

had a heck of a time (and only partial success) figuring out how to

drive them. We exchanged contact info and a pledge to get in touch

after the faire to share data and geek out on the strips. It wasn’t

until after I had gotten home did I piece it together that this guy was

none other than the “John Cohn” whose lonely, unanswered call for help

in 2007 was the only evidence I was able to find that anybody else in

the world was playing with these strips.

Maker Faire rocks.
Anyways, shortly after we got to our respective homes, John sent me

a copy of the datasheet in Chinese which I had already found earlier as

well as the PIC code for his headband. The PIC code was the missing key

to the puzzle and by studying it in conjunction with the

machine-translated datasheet I was finally able to get my head wrapped

around how the chip worked.

Below is a short video showing off a basic rainbow-scroll (the “hello world” of addressable RGB strip effects):
So that nobody has to ever go through what John and I went through to get these strips to work, I wrote an Arduino library for the HL1606

and open sourced it. It’s still a bit unpolished and under-documented

but it’s feature-complete in the sense that it can control all of the

features of the HL1606.

Oh, and before anybody asks, I don’t yet have a solid source for

more of the strips but I’ve found them being sold online. So far I’ve

only been able to find them being bundled with a controller and I’d

like to find a source selling them without one (hopefully at a reduced

price). To hunt them down on your own, the keywords to look for are

HL1606 and 5-volt operation. The 5-volt operation is actually the key

distinguisher, as all of the non-addressable RGB strips run on 12V or

higher.

Update 6/18/09: I see John’s posted an Instructable on his Too-cool Rainbow Headband.

In it he documents more what you need to do to drive the chip and even

suggests some possible suppliers for the strips. Check it out (and if

you like it, give him a vote for the ‘Get the LED Out’ contest he’s

entered it into 🙂

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15 Responses to “Addressable RGB LED Strip”

Joe Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

Where oh where can I buy this?
GoJimi Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

This

Looks Sweet! I am doing some research trying to find more info on these

strips…. it appears that the Chinese manufacturer is Top Semiconductor

Lighting Co., Ltd. and the model number is TP-YWSMD5050. Hopefully we

can track these down stateside!

GoJimi Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 5:29 pm

Also check the LED Light Ribbon (RRFT1000-40RGB) made by http://www.rightleds.com/?action=text|rightleds|1515|en|20589|2

this is the non waterproof one which may be cheaper… now if we can find

a way to purchase these in smaller quantities we would be set!

GoJimi Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

OK… found somebody who sells what appears to be these strips or a variation thereof… http://www.ledlight.com/electronic-flexible-water-proof-led-light.aspx

not sure of length, number of rgb leds per meter, or if these have the

hl1606. They are closed for today so I guess those questions will have

to wait till tomorrow!

BenD Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 8:57 pm

I’m also very interested in doing something with these. Perhaps if there was enough interest, a group buy could be organised?
Richard Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

How

long does it take to refresh the entire string of it – could you get

24-30 updates a second into a lenght that had a couple of hundred LEDs

on it?

dewski Says:

June 17th, 2009 at 9:52 pm

this

is awesome, i’ve always been interested in LED lighting and this fits

the bill for a ton of ideas I have, keep up the awesome work!

erik Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 1:07 am

I

live in Shenzhen (was just at the big electronics market yesterday) and

could visit this factory if there was enough interest in getting a

small order of these strips.

contact me at erikseverin at yahoo com
If there is contact info for John Cohn, I could ask him where,

specifically, he bought the strips. Was it in HuaQianBei Electronics

Market in Shenzhen? They have TONS of parts and especially LED bits to

pick through. I could return there and see if they have more.

Cheers.
jo Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 4:16 am

hi all,

these strips are great!!

I’m playing around with the Arduino and some TLC5940 16ch 12bit PWM

drivers. They work great, but a soldered solution with all the leds and

ICs is great!

I could just find larger quantities on ebay for around 50$/meter.

I hope they’ll get more pricy soon 🙂

Cheers,

jo

Will Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 6:36 am

I am also interested in this, any idea on where to find one?
Nick Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 6:54 am

This is exactly what I need!
So where can we get this :).
MarkP Says:

June 18th, 2009 at 7:16 am

Woah, long link! Try this instead: http://bit.ly/Fu9F9

Wednesday night – Max is 21 !

Today my Max turned 21 !.. That is just so cool and amazing to me. I can remember the day he was born so vividly.. it was about 30 degrees warmer than it is now.. one of the hottest Junes on record.  That day transformed our lives.. we were parents !.. I remember how wonderful and strange it felt to be holding our own baby.. I actually hadn’t ever looked at one closely before that.. and now I had to help take care of one…

Luckily.. now he takes care of us sometimes… Tonight he decided to cook us dinner in honor of his birthday. Max is an excellent vegetarian cook. Tonight he showed us how to make seitan kabobs from powdered wheat gluten. They were amazing.. you start witht he gluten.. add a bunch of savory glop, knead it like crazy…

cut into strips… then simmer it in broth for a while…

Taking time out for a now legal wine toast to the legal drinkign age…

thenbarbeque them over charcol. They were so amazing !.. and all it is is wheat protien.


Gabe and Max entertained us during dinner 

That ended well .. no ?


Later on we went inside for presents.. I gave Max a ‘Hail Sietan’ hoodie.. very appropriate tonight !

Here’s Max opening a gift from my folks.. it’s max’s great-grandfather’s lighter .. It’s so cool. it has his initials.. Max E? Ettlinger (Mom.. what does the E stand for ?)  Max loves having it I can tell !

Diane made another cool gift.. a home garden for max to take back to Brooklyn this weekend.. tomatoes, basil, cilantro, mint, etc.. Max loved it !

Finally time for cake.. Diane had found these cool multi color flame candles…Right after this shot, my camera ran out of batteries.. I got the cake moemnt on the other camera.. You’ll just have to imagine Max blowing these out..

Max and Gabe both got lotterie tickets in liu of a real college savings plan.. Max won $25 and Gabe won $2.. Now I can retire !!!

Then we all retired to the living room..

It was a great evening.. Max is such a good kid.. well.. I guess he’ not a kid anymore.. He’s such a good man.. I’m so proud of him..

OK.. time for bed.. more tomorrow.. nite all. nite Sam !
-me