I recently found these candles which have a little RGBW LED inside and can be controlled via Bluetooth 4. They have a nice little feature where a small microphone built into the candle will detect if you blow into them, turning them off and – somewhat counter-intuitively – turning them back on again.
Continue reading Controlling PlayBulb candles with Python
Tag: Python
The Python programming language
Capturing serial events
My home automation and monitoring system runs off two separate radio networks; RF12 and XRF. The RF12 network communicates with a JeeNode LED board, which also runs the light strip for the centre cabinet. The XRF network uses a USB stick made by the makers of the XRF radio.
Both of these devices create a serial port instance on the Ubuntu server, and pass through exactly what is sent or received – either PC to radio, or radio to PC. In order for my web apps to communicate with them, I had to find a way to constantly monitor what was received, and also a way to send commands out.