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Illuminatrix

Stateful lighting for 3D printing

docdawningDocDawning
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Illuminatrix (Say: Illum-in-natrix) is a hardware & software platform to giving stateful lighting to 3D printers. The stateful aspect is typically driven by an Octoprint plugin that gives easy settings and manual controls.

Use Illuminatrix to beautifully illuminate your printer such that you can see your print progress while gaining excellent ambience. All while also giving yourself some advice of your print status though color and light.

  • 1 × Arduino Arduino loaded with the Illuminatrix Firmware
  • 1 × RGB LEDs A typical strip of them should do
  • 1 × 3 NPN Transistors Nothing special required. Just be mindful of the power limits if you're going to go hardcore
  • 1 × Power Supply I vamp power from my ATX PSUs, which gives handy clean 5V and 12V

  • Illuminatrix update

    DocDawning • 06/23/2016 at 06:49 • 0 comments

    I prototyped Illuminatrix on my printer Cupcake155. Then I built the DeltaFlyer and recently got around to installing Illuminatrix. The original setup uses a full Arduino Diecimila. It's physically big and I decided to reduce some stuff on my second round with it.

    Here it is in its second iteration:

    Here I'm using an Arduino Mini Pro instead of the full Diecimila. Controlling it is different since there's no FTDI and thus we have to use legitimate RS-232, but all I actually had to do was connect the Mini Pro's RXD pin to the Raspberry Pi's GPIO TXD pin. This course depended on first having actually flashed the Mini Pro with my Illuminatrix Arduino firmware.

    Since I build my printers around ATX PSUs, I have 5V and 12V rails handy and that helps a lot for Illuminatrix. As you can see above, 5V from the PSU goes right to my board. I run the 12V line to my Vcc of my LED strip and that's it for power (plus GNDs, obviously).

    I'm toying seriously with the idea of doing a PCB run to formalize this, I am very much not happy with wires hanging around, so I think there's a good chance I'll make this clean. In that event, I may order a bunch of extras and possibly make them available as kits. Please please drop me a line if that interests you, I wouldn't really be doing this to make money (I'm highly employed as it is).

View project log

  • 1
    Step 1

    Flash your Arduino with the Illuminatrix Arduino firmware.

  • 2
    Step 2

    Setup communication with your Arduino. You don't actually need Octoprint at all, you can issue commands directly to the firmware, commands like:

    PURPLE;

    If you're using Octoprint on an Raspberry Pi (my recommendation), then you need to provide a means for the Raspberry Pi to talk to the Arduino. Arduino's with a USB interface make this insanely easy.

  • 3
    Step 3

    If using Octoprint, install the Octoprint Illuminatrix plugin. Follow the steps from the readme on github.

View all 5 instructions

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