Associate
- Joined
- 20 Jul 2007
- Posts
- 2,135
- Location
- A sunnier or damper area than Ron-ski....
....gotta work on that title.... 
Backstory
My solar panels and battery have changed the way my house runs, however I’m tired of endless arrays of apps and having to stare at a phone to understand what’s happening. You never leave someone’s home enthusing about how beautiful their phone, their TV or their fridge was – technology remains at best minimalist, at worst it is soulless.
Meanwhile, we have all these lovely ornaments and crafted objects that gather dust or just sit dumbly in cabinets doing very little but gather dust. After a while, you stop noticing them at all.
Surely, there's a way to combine the best of both??? (dramatic arc begins!)
Problem 1: I had a glass dragon ornament that was stuck in a box as it was too fragile to trust that I'd bought from Conwy castle last year - a beautiful object, but very fragile and also only really at its best when light shining through it.
Problem 2: I started the Overclockers solar tracking league table on PVOutput and so became overly attached to tracking how well (or badly) I was doing each day compared to nefarious delinquents like @Ron-ski @Freefaller @Welshman or the many other folks! So I didn't want to constantly be opening apps to see this.
Problem 3: Solar is generally addictive - so you find yourself checking the app to check your battery level, check your household usage, checking if you're exporting, check if you need to put the washing machine on.... I know I sound like a loon, but those of you who have solar will back me up.
I made a walnut base:
Then I soldered the hell out of a whole bunch of stuff:
Then I embedded LEDs into the walnut base (I also put a 3d printed frosted light deflector over them to diffuse the light)
These LEDs were then connected to a microchip with an LED controller – and created a 3d printed case for this. Then I connected this chip via wifi to my home assistant instance and away we go!
How it works
To visitors to my house, this is simply a cool base for my glass ornament, but every pixel is programmed to convey information.
In this shot, you can see the outer ring is showing the battery is 100% full.
The next ring in shows the household usage - which is currently around 2.3kw (a full ring is 4kw+ down to an empty ring which means nothing is being used).
The animated effect in the centre shows lots of energy generation – this gets more and more animated with increased solar generation - as this shot was at night, it was naturally no inner effects.
Below, you can see the animation is going as it's mid morning.
View attachment Xe7ZW5c.jpg
Finally, when I’m top of the PV Output table – it turns the whole thing rainbow coloured…. here's a photo of me testing this as it unfortunately hasn't happened recently since lots of new members joined and Ron-ski upgraded his solar panels...!
View attachment rXkHNK2.jpg
The whole thing updates every 5 seconds and turns off automatically at night.
It’s mad, I know, but it shows technology doesn’t need to be trapped within a glass front and a monochromatic plastic/aluminium case. And that’s another 20 fewer glances at a phone each day….!
Basically was only the cost of the LEDs and the ESP8266 as had the rest lying around - so just needed:
- A glass cloche online to protect the dragon from accidental bumps
- A WS2802 LED Ring Array for the base lighting
- An offcut piece of 270mm x 270mm walnut for the base
- An ESP8266
- An LED transformer – I used a 15A 5V one for this project. Probably overkill, but I like to over-engineer such things…
- One mad wumman!
Posted some more pics on my instagram feed for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/handsonk80/
Now need to go, there's some men in white coats that have arrived to take me away.....
Backstory
My solar panels and battery have changed the way my house runs, however I’m tired of endless arrays of apps and having to stare at a phone to understand what’s happening. You never leave someone’s home enthusing about how beautiful their phone, their TV or their fridge was – technology remains at best minimalist, at worst it is soulless.
Meanwhile, we have all these lovely ornaments and crafted objects that gather dust or just sit dumbly in cabinets doing very little but gather dust. After a while, you stop noticing them at all.
Surely, there's a way to combine the best of both??? (dramatic arc begins!)
Problem 1: I had a glass dragon ornament that was stuck in a box as it was too fragile to trust that I'd bought from Conwy castle last year - a beautiful object, but very fragile and also only really at its best when light shining through it.
Problem 2: I started the Overclockers solar tracking league table on PVOutput and so became overly attached to tracking how well (or badly) I was doing each day compared to nefarious delinquents like @Ron-ski @Freefaller @Welshman or the many other folks! So I didn't want to constantly be opening apps to see this.
Problem 3: Solar is generally addictive - so you find yourself checking the app to check your battery level, check your household usage, checking if you're exporting, check if you need to put the washing machine on.... I know I sound like a loon, but those of you who have solar will back me up.
I made a walnut base:
Then I soldered the hell out of a whole bunch of stuff:
Then I embedded LEDs into the walnut base (I also put a 3d printed frosted light deflector over them to diffuse the light)
These LEDs were then connected to a microchip with an LED controller – and created a 3d printed case for this. Then I connected this chip via wifi to my home assistant instance and away we go!
How it works
To visitors to my house, this is simply a cool base for my glass ornament, but every pixel is programmed to convey information.
In this shot, you can see the outer ring is showing the battery is 100% full.
The next ring in shows the household usage - which is currently around 2.3kw (a full ring is 4kw+ down to an empty ring which means nothing is being used).
The animated effect in the centre shows lots of energy generation – this gets more and more animated with increased solar generation - as this shot was at night, it was naturally no inner effects.
Below, you can see the animation is going as it's mid morning.
View attachment Xe7ZW5c.jpg
Finally, when I’m top of the PV Output table – it turns the whole thing rainbow coloured…. here's a photo of me testing this as it unfortunately hasn't happened recently since lots of new members joined and Ron-ski upgraded his solar panels...!
View attachment rXkHNK2.jpg
The whole thing updates every 5 seconds and turns off automatically at night.
It’s mad, I know, but it shows technology doesn’t need to be trapped within a glass front and a monochromatic plastic/aluminium case. And that’s another 20 fewer glances at a phone each day….!
Basically was only the cost of the LEDs and the ESP8266 as had the rest lying around - so just needed:
- A glass cloche online to protect the dragon from accidental bumps
- A WS2802 LED Ring Array for the base lighting
- An offcut piece of 270mm x 270mm walnut for the base
- An ESP8266
- An LED transformer – I used a 15A 5V one for this project. Probably overkill, but I like to over-engineer such things…
- One mad wumman!
Posted some more pics on my instagram feed for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/handsonk80/
Now need to go, there's some men in white coats that have arrived to take me away.....
