Workplace LED strip lighting

A remote box allows users to wirelessly control LED strip lighting in Gonzaga's Next Gen Tech Bar. They can use a mode knob to select from a variety of preset modes, as well as manually set it to any color using RGB and brightness sliders. Users can also tweet at it using a hashtag to temporarily override the current color. A built in LCD screen displays the current mode/RGB values/tweeted colors.

[I am currently working with a mechanical engineer to design a case for the remote]

The Story Behind the Project

This was my first real microelectronics project that I started during quarantine, and while it taught me a lot about a wide variety of things and was remarkably functional, it was also somewhat clunky and has now been replaced by the same system that the Christmas Tree uses which can be controlled from phones instead of a single large remote.

Features

• The remote box is powered by an Arduino Nano and acts as a dumb input/output device to allow a Rasperry Pi (networked via NRF24 radio modules) to get input from the Arduino's 6 potentiometers, as well as output to it's LCD display

• Multiple client Pis can be set up on the network to mirror the primary Pi's light strip, allowing you to synchronize the entire room without running wires everywhere

• If the remote box gets out of range or the Pi's program is not running, it displays an error message on the LCD. The Pi's connection indicator light also goes out.

• The remote can be powered off of battery power or directly from USB power while charging the battery

• If the system is in Twitter Mode, tweeted colors stay endlessly. Otherwise, they persist for a specified duration (adjustable with a knob on the remote) between 10 seconds to 30 minutes, before reverting to the previous mode. When a tweet is received, the LCD displays the Twitter username of the tweeter, and what color/mode they selected.