ArcReactorX

Description

Bascially the idea is to make something cool to wear at ComicCon Delhi,India. I am a great fan of Iron Man and i love the idea in the very sense of it. So, i thought it would be great to do an Indianized Iron Man Cosplay at the comic con surprising all my friends :D

Th iron man is symbolized by his Arc Reactor. So, better build an arc reactor but intead of building the plain old arc reactor, i think it should be a bit more intutive and has tons and tons of animations and features.
Human brain is more attentive to motion than still light, So.. I would well add some bling bling to it :)

Details

The arcReactorX is a wearable arc reactor clone which runs on a LiIon Battery from an old cell phone! It has 8 Blue LEDs on the circumfrence and a bright white LED in the centre.

Proposed Features:

Small and light
Power efficient
Bright
Change-able modes using a switch
Since, it has a battery, we need a battery indicator like a dial on the reactor.So if its 50% charged we light up only half of it. Follow the discharge graphs for more accuracy!
Morse Code for SOS
A mind blowing startup sequence
Knight rider effect on LEDs
Breathing effect on the Middle high power LED

Components

1 × MSP430G2452 microcontroller (TSSOP14) Runs off a standard LiIon without any regulator ! Free sample from TI

1 × 2N3904 (SOT23) Discrete Semiconductors / Transistors, MOSFETs, FETs, IGBTs

8 × Blue LEDs (PLCC2) The PLCC2 ones are brighter and can be sourced easily

1 × ULN2803 (8 Ch. Darlington) MSP430 cant output enough juice to run all the LEDs

1 × 8mm 0.5W White LED The brightest one that satisfies the requirement ! 1 W is likely to heat a lot and smaller ones are kiddos

Project Logs

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Final Log!
Rohit Gupta • 04/23/2014 at 05:59 • 0 comments

I present to you my project the ARC ReactorX.
It has 7 animations/modes to flaunt including a battery level indicator to tell you when to start conserving for the show!
I would like to thank HackADay projects for such a nice platform. It really pretty cool and helps a lot while documenting and presenting things !
After sticking it on a Tshirt it is suggested that you wear a black T over it or something that is not that closely knit. Keep the Tshirt Plain and simple!
I even clicked a selfie :P
Cheers,
Rohit
Troubled by the OS.
Rohit Gupta • 04/23/2014 at 05:49 • 0 comments

Woah! It took me a while to figure out how to get the video from My Nokia Lumia device to Ubuntu after my Windows Laptop crashed. I tried a couple of ways like Bluetooth, Wifi,SD Card etc. Ubuntu (12.04LTS 64bit) does understand MTP natively. So, there is a way for Android 4.x which also uses MTP and it also works for WP8 (Not very reliably though)
I have documented my way here.
I got my video now and am editing it !
New way to wear it!
Rohit Gupta • 04/17/2014 at 18:23 • 0 comments
Since, i reported issues wearing the originally made strap-on reactor. I decided to sacrifice an old Tshirt and mount the 3 parts i.e.
- The control leaf
- The battery
- PCB
On the tshirt itself. I used the trusted "Velcro" to do so. I am not that good at stitching but after a few needle pricks i was able to stitch the Velcro on the Tshirt.
Below is the picture of all the 3 parts secured with velcro on the tshirt
ArcReactorX at ComicCon \m/
Rohit Gupta • 04/16/2014 at 18:50 • 0 comments
I went to comicCon with the ArcReactorX!
Did a Cosplay! Totally Rocked it! A lot of people were noticing it and asked me where did i buy it! I told them "I built it" They were like, "Oh Man! Cool! "
Some did offered to buy it! But I ai'nt sellin here!
It was also the field test of the ArcReactorX. I noticed two issues:
- The mode change switch needs some debouncing code!
- The straps not gonna work! It eventually starts to fall off. Plus is not very comfortable to wear ;)
The positives were:
- The battery lasts long!
- The LED brightness is very good
- Its damn cool!
The makeshift Strap On ArcReactorX
Rohit Gupta • 04/16/2014 at 18:41 • 0 comments

I made a quick strap that i can wear under the Tshirt.
Plus added some coating to protect the copper!
It has welcro and elastic on it.So that some of my friends can also wear it. The battery is on the back.
Firmware V2! All modes coded
Rohit Gupta • 04/16/2014 at 18:11 • 0 comments
I have written a new firmware that has the following modes:
- The Epic startup sequence
- All ON and middle too (Static)
- Breathing LED mode
- Flashing outer circle (knight rider ) (My favourite)
- Loader type
- alternative on/off
- Morse Code for SOS
- Morse Code for ILU ( Had some flash remaning :P ) with a special ring arrangement
- Battery life indicator
There are some debounce issues ( duh! ) but i guess this will be good for comicCon as of now!
Git Repo Updated
Github Repo updated with experimental code
Rohit Gupta • 04/14/2014 at 19:15 • 0 comments

Just added the experimental code to the repo!
The Startup Sequence Video
Rohit Gupta • 04/13/2014 at 20:07 • 0 comments

Added some background jet effect i talked about in the previous log! I will now make the other effects and find a suitable way to wear it.
The Awesome Startup Sequence
Rohit Gupta • 04/13/2014 at 19:44 • 0 comments

I thought a cool startup sequence. It is like a slowly pacing up knight rider and then the middle LED kind of turns on slowly (fade up) while the rest of them are off and then Bang they all light up. Looks super cool!
Imagine the sound of a starting jet as its picking up Revs playing in the background!
I did connect the middle LED to PWM pin. So, i can get smooth PWM !
Howdy, MSP430 ! All cool bro?
Rohit Gupta • 04/12/2014 at 14:23 • 0 comments

This is just to check if the microcontroller is happy in its place. No RESET line issues were detected. The power and programming interface worked fine.

You can see the programming wires in the picture below. It was programmed using the MSP430 launchpad.

I am using Energia inside which i run code which uses some of energia and some basic register level access at points where energia has not dug yet.