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Stephan Smetsers inchl software http://www.inchl.net |
Visual Studio Controlled Light Bulb
Years ago I stopped competitive
swimming and switched over to water polo because I felt very attracted to
practicing a sport in a team. Nowadays I don’t do anything else. I still
practice a sport in a team but now I call it “work” and water polo is replaced
by software-development. The players in my team are my colleagues. But where is
the scoreboard?
Light bulbs
as a scoreboard
Scoreboard
In a water polo match both
teams can clearly see the score so far, because a large lighted scoreboard is
placed near the border of the swimming pool. In the team sport called “software
development” there are different scoreboards available for different purposes. Is
planning running out of time? How many hours are spend? How many bugs are
solved? How many (yellow) notes are still to go in this sprint? Most scores are
sent to all team players by means of an e-mail. Wouldn’t it be nice to use a
kind of water polo scoreboard in our projects? Let us start with constructing a
prototype, consisting of three light bulbs.
Prototype
The prototype, we are going to
build, consists out of three light bulbs, who are controlled by the compiler of
Visual Studio. A yellow light shows that the compiler is still compiling the
source code. A green light shows that the compilation was successful and a red
light shows that there was an error in the source code. The red light is
similar to a counter goal in a match. As a team one should intervene quickly to
equalize the score. Switching the bulbs on and off is performed by means of a
relay. This type of circuit makes it possible to switch a fair electric power
(240V, 3A) with the help of a small steering current. The control of this
steering current is done by a software program. The website of Velleman shows
different interface boards. For our prototype we select the next two products
of Velleman:
·
K8055
(USB EXPERIMENT INTERFACE BOARD)
·
K2633 (RELAY BOARD)
Picture 1: K8055 Picture
2: K2633
K8055 is an
interface board connected to the computer by USB. Together with the board goes
a CD with a manual and a DLL library making the controlling of the interface
board possible. This board is controlling the relay board by means of a
steering current. The K8055 interface board and the K2633 relay board fit
perfectly together. The map of the electric connections of our prototype is
shown in picture 3.
Picture 3: Electric circuit of the prototype
Final product
After a day of
putting together all the components we have provided our prototype with three
240V sockets for the connection of the light bulbs to the relay. All the wiring
is properly hidden in a plastic box for safety reasons. With the help of my
(retired) father we have reached a perfect final result. At last I have to
write the necessary software coupled to the compiler of Visual Studio. This is
not a real problem because Visual Studio (MSBuild) can be easily configured via
pre- and postbuild events.
Picture 4: Base for sockets. Picture 5: Sockets and built-in K2633.
Picture 6: K8055 Interface board. Picture 7: K8055 completed with
connectors.
For a
demonstration of the final result please click the next link (English spoken):
http://www.inchl.nl/blog/20080820 - Visual Studio
controlled light bulb/lightbulb.wmv
More
information can be found on the following websites: