Category: Open Source

Combining open source hardware with free and open source software

Plovdiv – European Capital of Open Source Hardware!

OSHdata is a brand new independent project launched in 2020. The goal is to report the state of the Open Source Hardware (OSH) based on the data from the certification program of Open Source Hardware Association. Recently OSHdata announced a public report for 2020.

All time open source hardware frequent creators as of February 2020

ANAVI Technology made it to 7th place in the hall of fame for OSH Frequent Certification Creators! Absolute number 1 are our neightbours Olimex. We are all from Plovdiv, Bulgaria and this is not just a coincidence!

Olimex is specialized in open source hardware. They are open source hardware pioneers and have hundreds of open source products. The company was established in 1991 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Olimex development boards and derivatives based on them are used in numerous industrial applications around the world: agricultural tractors, 3D printers, huge mining machines, smart traffic lights, variable speed drivers for oil, gas pumps and conveyors, etc. If you are curious to learn more have a look at Tsevan Uzunov’s (CEO of OLimex) talk at FOSDEM 2020.

Several years ago Olimex decided to switch from EAGLE to KiCad for designing their printed circuit boards. They designed complicated devices with multi-layer boards using KiCad like the do-it-yourself laptop Olimex Teres-I and A64-OLinuXino embedded Linux computer. FreedomBox Foundation even relies on Olimex for Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK!

After switching to KiCad, engineers from Olimex made numerous free workshop to share their experience. KiCad is a free and open source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tool that runs on MS Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux distributions.

Is there any point to make open source hardware with proprietary tools? Not at all! This is why KiCad is a great open source tool for making open source hardware. Back in the days, ANAVI Technology was started and adopted KiCad entirely because of all the knowledge shared by Olimex.

Considering the total number of certified products by Olimex and ANAVI Technology, Bulgaria is the leading country in Europe and obviously Plovdiv is European capital of open source hardware!

Since March 2018, following the recommendations of Drew Fustini, all products of ANAVI Technology are certified by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA).

One more thing: Olimex, Drew, thank you 🙂

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Holiday Lights with Home Assistant, ANAVI Miracle Controller, and Olimex WS2811 LED Ropes

This YouTube video demonstrates do-it-yourself (DIY) holiday lights to celebrate Christmas or Halloween using ANAVI Miracle Controller, Olimex WS2811 LED ropes and the popular open source home automation platform Home Assistant!

ANAVI Miracle Controller and Olimex LED-Ropes-10 managed from Home Assistant app for Android

All kits of ANAVI Miracle Controller come with WS2812B LED strip, however the board is also compatible with other addressable LED strips. In a previous update we covered Adafruit NeoPixels and now we are focussed on Olimex WS2811 LED Rope.

ANAVI Miracle Controller with mini OLED display and a couple of Olimex LED-ROPE-10

Required Hardware

  • ANAVI Miracle Controller
  • 5V power supply
  • Two Olimex LED-ROPE-10
  • Raspberry Pi (recommended 3 or newer) with Home Assistant

Olimex is a well-known company in the maker community and I am lucky because their headquarter is my hometown Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Olimex offers addressable, water proof, sealed with resin RGB WS2811 ropes with various number of LEDs. For this video I used a couple of Olimex LED-ROPE-10. The rope is waterproof so it is suitable for both indoor and outdoor installations. It works with power supply in the range from 3.3V to 5.5V and has a dedicated WS2811 driver for each LED.

The typical color code for Olimex LED-ROPE-10:

  • Olimex rope RED wire – VCC (3.3V-5.5V)
  • Olimex rope GREEN/BLUE (varies) wire – GND
  • Olimex rope WHITE wire – DATA

Each RGB LED in Olimex rope draws approximately 50mA at 5V with red, green, and blue at full brightness. Olimex LED-ROPE-10 has only 10 RGB LEDs with makes approximately 500mA and it is OK to power it through ANAVI Miracle Controller. For installation will longer ropes with bigger consumption wire the VCC and GND lines directly to the power supply.

When using Olimex LED ropes, set ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V input and use an appropriate 5V center positive power supply!

For Olimex LED-Ropes-10 set ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V and use appropriate 5V power supply
Wiring of a couple of Olimex LED-ROPE-10 to ANAVI Miracle Controller

NOTE: The color codes of other addressable LED strips, including WS2812B LED strip from all kits, are different!

Due to differences in color codes this wiring is valid only for Olimex LED ropes. Be careful and check the proper wiring as well input voltage requirements if you are using a different type of addressable LED strip or rope.

Software

Home Assistant must be installed on an appropriate device. If you haven’t installed it already, a single board computer like Raspberry Pi (version 3 or newer) is the perfect fit!

MQTT broker is also required and must be installed. You can install Mosquitto from Home Assistant add-on store. Integrate the MQTT broker in Home Assistant and enable discovery. The exact steps have been covered in a previous blog post about ANAVI Miracle Controller and Adafruit NeoPixels.

Please, ensure you are running the latest version of the open source firmware for ANAVI Miracle Controller. It is available at GitHub. You can flash it through Arduino IDE following these steps.

After completing the initial installation and integration in Home Assistant, you can easily control the holiday lights from your personal computer, smartphone or tablet. You can either install the official mobile app on your smartphone or use the web interface from any modern HTML5 web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc). Furthermore, with Home Assistant you can create automation and trigger automatically the holiday lights depending on various events.

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ANAVI Fume Extractor Is Coming Soon…

Stay safe while soldering with ANAVI Fume Extractor

ANAVI Fume Extractor is an entirely open source smart solder smoke absorber certified by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) with UID  BG000060. ANAVI Fume Extractor is powered by a Wi-Fi development board with ESP8266, 80mm fan and a replaceable carbon filter. It has a dedicated slots for a mini OLED I²C display and MQ-135 gas sensor module as well as slots up to 3 additional I²C sensor modules. Furthermore, there are UART pins for easy flashing of custom software and an extra GPIO for connecting external peripherals.

ANAVI Fume Extractor

We are preparing a crowdfunding campaign to support low-volume manufacturing in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Learn more about ANAVI Fume Extractor and subscribe for updates at Crowd Supply.

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ANAVI Smiley and ANAVI Tag Manager Certified by the Open Source Hardware Association

The primary goal of ANAVI Technology Ltd. is to combine open source hardware with free and open source software. So far numerous of our development boards have been certified by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA). In February 2020 a couple new products were also certified: ANAVI Smiley and ANAVI Tag Manager. Both of them have been designed with the free and open source tool KiCad.

A lot of products on the market claim their are open source hardware, however this is not always true. Open Source Hardware certification allows the community to quickly identify hardware that truly complies with the definition of open source hardware. Because of this certification by OSHWA is important for us.

ANAVI Smiley

Image
ANAVI Smiley add-on board for Raspberry Pi as a soldering kit

ANAVI Smiley is a simple add on for Raspberry Pi that comes as a soldering kit. It has a couple of LEDs and a button. A simple Python 3 application for using this add-on board is available at GitHub. ANAVI Smiley was certified by OSHWA with UID BG000061. It has been designed as a prize for the teams competing at Pi Wars 2020. Soon ANAVI Smiley will be also available on sale at tindie.

ANAVI Tag Manager

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ANAVI Tag Manager with PN532 NFC RFID module and an acrylic enclosure

ANAVI Tag Manager is a WiFi development board for using PN532 NFC RFID module. The board is using ESP8266. It is powered from microUSB connector. There are slots for UART pins, mini OLED display and up to 3 I2C sensor modules. Furthermore there is also an extra GPIO pin for custom automation solutions. ANAVI Tag Manager is useful for various applications with NFC, including smart locks and payment systems. It has been certified by OSHWA with UID BG000062.

Stay tuned for new articles with details about both of these exciting new open source hardware gadgets!

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HackSpace Magazine Covered ANAVI Miracle Controller

HackSpace is a monthly magazine for makers. We are very proud that issue 27 for February 2020 covered our open source hardware ANAVI Miracle Controller in section “Crowdfunding now”. You can buy HackSpace issue 27 or download it as a PDF for free.

ANAVI Miracle Controller is an open source hardware development board for simultaneously managing a couple of 5V or 12V addressable (digital) LED strips. Furthermore you can attach to it mini OLED display and up to 3 I2C sensor modules. The default firmware is available as an Arduino sketch at GitHub. Out of the box it is compatible with the popular open source automation software Home Assistant over the machine-to-machine protocol MQTT.

Right now we are running a crowding campaign at Crowd Supply to fund mass manufacturing of ANAVI Miracle Controller.  We hope you’ll jump in and help us develop further this entirely open source project!

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Flashing Firmware on ANAVI Miracle Controller with Arduino IDE

ANAVI Miracle Controller is a new entirely open source development board for addressable (digital) LED strips like NeoPixels, WS2812B, WS2811, etc. The major advantages are that you can control two LED strips simultaneously, add a mini OLED display and I2C sensor modules as peripherals. Recently we launched a crowdfunding campaign for it at Crowd Supply.

ANAVI Miracle Controller

ANAVI Miracle Controller is a development board and it is easy to flash a custom firmware on it. The process is very similar as for our other open source project like ANAVI Thermometer, ANAVI Gas Detector and ANAVI Light Controller.

This tutorial explains the exact steps how to compile and upload the default open source Arduino sketch for ANAVI Miracle Controller using Arduino IDE.

Required Hardware

  • ANAVI Miracle Controller
  • USB to UART debug cable
  • Addressable LED strip
  • Appropriate power supply at 5V or 12V depending on the type of LED strips
  • Personal computer with MS Widows, Mac OS or GNU/Linux distribution
  • Optionally a mini OLED display and other peripherals can be attached
ANAVI Miracle Developer kit

Download Source Code from GitHub

The default firmware of ANAVI Miracle Controller is an open source Arduino sketch. It relies on several popular open source Arduino libraries, including FastLED for controlling addressable LED strips. Clone or download the source code from GitHub.

Connecting UART to USB

Each ANAVI Miracle Controller kit includes a USB to UART debug cable with CP2102. Depending on the operating system on your PC you might be required to install additional drives. It works out of the box on GNU/Linux distributions. As open source enthusiasts we are using it on Ubuntu. Plug the USB in your computer and connect the 3 wires as follows:

ANAVI Miracle ControllerUSB to UART Debug Cable
RXTX
TXRX
GNDGND
Connecting USB to UART cable to ANAVI Miracle Controller

Download Arduino IDE

Download and install Arduino IDE on your personal computer. It is free and open source software available for MS Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux distributions.

Launch Arduino IDE. From File > Open load an Arduino sketch. It can be the default firmware or any other compatible with ANAVI Miracle Controller Arduino sketch.

Configure ESP8266 in Arduino IDE

Go to File > Preferences. Select Settings and in the field Additional Boards Manager URLs add: http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json

From Arduino IDE select Tools > Board: Generic ESP8266 Module. Set the flash size to 4M (1M SPIFFS). The upload speed is 115200. Adjust the exact port of USB to serial debug cable connected to your computer.

Install Libraries

Select Tools > Manage Libraries. The Arduino library manager will appear. Install all required libraries and their exact versions. Over the time, with the development of the default firmware, new libraries might be added. Please have a look at the README file to get the up to date list of all Arduino libraries on which the the default firmware depends on.

Compile & Upload

In Arduino IDE click Verify/Compile. If there are any errors, please double check that you have installed all required libraries and their exact versions. If the source code compiles successfully, please proceed to to the next step for flashing the firmware.

Set the jumper to 5V or 12V depending on the type of addressable LED strip and power supply. Mismatch of the voltage may lead to severe hardware failure.

In Arduino IDE click Upload. Set the jumper on ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V or 12V depending on your power supply and type of LED strips. The power supply voltage must match the required voltage by the LED strips, for example 5V for NeoPixels and the WS2812B included in all kits. Press and hold the RESET button on ANAVI Miracle Controller. Without releasing the RESET button, plug the power supply in the barrel jack of ANAVI Miracle Controller.

Do NOT release the RESET button until you see in Arduino IDE that the upload is 100% completed!

ANAVI Miracle Controller with 2 WS2812B LED strips connected to a laptop using USB to UART cable

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Improved Arduino Sketch for ANAVI Light Controller

How often do you get software or firmware updates for a 2-year-old device? Probably not very often. This is not the case for ANAVI Light Controller! We have a major update of its Arduino sketch for you.

ANAVI Light Controller

ANAVI Light Controller open source hardware WiFi device for controlling a 12V RGB LED strip. It was brought to life through a crowdfunding campaign at Crowd in 2018. Now is January 2020, so this makes it ~2 years old! A lot of things have changed during this time. ANAVI Light Controller has been certified by Open Source Hardware Association (OSHA) and it now on sale at our distributors: Crowd Supply, Pi Supply and neven.cz.

Terminals for connecting 12V RGB LED strip to ANAVI Light Controller

Recently we made a major improvements to the default firmware available as an Arduino sketch at GitHub:

  • Support Home Assistant automatic discovery over MQTT
  • Turn on LED D1 on ANAVI Light Controller if the device is not connected to local WiFi network and needs initial configuration
  • Wait for a few seconds while LED D1 is blinking immediately after turning on ANAVI Light Controller to allow reset by keeping SW1 pressed
  • Append the last 5 characters of the machine ID to the WiFi Access Point (AP) to simplify the identification of the ANAVI Light Controller during the initial setup
  • Support MQTT messages with large payload for reporting back the current state of the RGB LED strips on topic stat/dev-id/color
  • Add DEBUG macros, disabled by default, if enabled additional debug information will be printed in the serial monitor
Changing colors of 12V RGB LED strip through Home Assistant using ANAVI Light Controller

You can either compile and upload the new version through Arduino IDE or just grab the binary from GitHub and flash it on your ANAVI Light Controller.

To learn more how ANAVI Light Controller works out the box with the popular open source platform Home Assistant read our previous article. It reveals the exact steps the setup MQTT Broker in Home Assistant and after that to automatically discover ANAVI Light Controller.

ANAVI Light Controller is suitable for low-cost 12V analog (non-addressable) LED strips. If you need a WiFi development board for controlling digital (addressable) LED strips at 5V or 12V have a look at our other open source product ANAVI Miracle Controller.

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Hey, Google Turn On The Christmas Tree

Happy New Year! May the open source be with you!

The Christmas tree is among the most popular symbols of the holiday season. Decorating it is always fun, especially for a maker.

Andrey Kozhevnikov a.k.a. CODeRUS, a talented software engineer and a very skilled maker, used ANAVI Miracle Controller and addressable (digital) LED strips to decorate his Christmas tree and to control it with voice commands through Google Assistant and Home Assistant. Home Assistant is a popular open source platform for home automation. Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant that recognizes speech and voice commands. CODeRUS shared a short video in twitter with the amazing result!

ANAVI Miracle Controller

ANAVI Miracle Controller is an ESP8266-powered, open source, Wi-Fi development board to control two 5 V and or 12 V LED strips.  It supports popular LEDs including Neopixel, WS2811, WS2812B, TM1809, etc. A crowdfunding campaign is running right now at Crowd Supply to fund mass production of the board.

As a small gift for the leading contributor to the Arduino sketch for another of our open source projects, ANAVI Light Controller, we sent one of the first stable prototypes of ANAVI Miracle Controller to CODeRUS. We were sure that he will make something interesting with it. His amazing creativity is always inspiring!

CODeRUS Новогодняя ёлка

CODeRUS is also well known in the open source communities because of his numerous contributions over the years to Maemo, MeeGo and Sailfish OS. These names ring a bell in any die-hard open source fan as they were/are brands of GNU/Linux distributions for smartphones, most notably Nokia models like N900 (Maemo) and N9 (MeeGo Harmattan) made a decade ago.

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Adafruit NeoPixels and Home Assistant

Adafruit NeoPixels are rings, strips and other printed circuit boards with addressable RGB LED strips. It this video tutorial you will learn how to use NeoPixels with the popular open source home automation platform Home Assistant without any coding!

Yes, that’s correct! Let’s get started with Adafruit NeoPixel Ring and NeoPixel Stick in Home Assistant without any coding, just a few simple configurations.

The key for this tutorial is ANAVI Miracle Controller. An ESP8266-powered, open source, Wi-Fi dev board to control two 5V or two 12V LED strips. It supports popular LEDs including Neopixel, WS2811, WS2812B, TM1809, etc. Furthermore ANAVI Miracle Controller has dedicated slots for mini OLED display and up to 3 additional sensor modules. Right now we are running a crowdfunding campaign at Crowd Supply to fund mass production of ANAVI Miracle Controller.

Adafruit NeoPixels work at 5V so set the jumper on ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V and use an appropriate 5V power supply.

Required Hardware

  • Adafruit NeoPixel Ring
  • Adafruit NeoPixel Stick
  • 6 male to male jumper wires
  • 5V DC power supply
  • ANAVI Miracle Controller
  • Personal computer, for example Raspberry Pi

Step By Step Installation

  • Install Home Assistant through Hass.io on the personal computer (it is recommended to use Raspberry Pi 3 or 4).
  • Install Mosquitto MQTT broker from Hass.io add-on store, configure username and password as well as Access Control Lists (ACL).
  • From Configure > Integrations add new MQTT integration and click Enable discovery. It is mandatory to enable discovery!
  • Solder male to male jumper wires to Adafruit NeoPixel Ring and NeoPixel Stick.
  • Connect NeoPixel Stick DIN to LED1, GND to GND and 5VDC to VOUT on ANAVI Miracle Controller. Connect NeoPixel Ring Data Input to LED2, GND to GND and 5V DC Power to VOUT on ANAVI Miracle Controller.
  • Set the jumper of ANAVI Miracle Controller to 5V and use appropriate power supply to turn on the board.
  • Configure ANAVI Miracle Controller to connect to your local WiFi network, set LED type to NEOPIXEL, number of LEDs for LED1 to 8 and number of LEDs for LED2 to 12.
  • In Home Assistant web interface, a couple of new devices will be automatically added under the names ANAVI Miracle Controller LED1 and ANAVI Miracle Controller LED2. Set different effects and colors for each Adafruit NeoPixels.

How Does It Work?

ANAVI Miracle Controller combines open source hardware with free and open source software. It has been certified by the Open Source Hardware Association under UID BG000050. After initial configuration the default firmware of ANAVI Miracle Controller, available as an Arduino sketch in GitHub, connects to the WiFi network and the MQTT broker. It sends a retained MQTT message with JSON payload containing description of the device. Home Assistant, thanks to the MQTT integration with enabled discovery, automatically receives the message and recognizes the device as MQTT Light component. As a result out of the box ANAVI Miracle Controller appears in the Home Assistant GUI.

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Control 12V RGB LED Strip from Home Assistant

Home Assistant is a popular open source platform for home automation. It is written in Python programming language and runs perfectly on Raspberry Pi 3 B/B+ or 4 B. Now, with the latest updates of the Arduino sketch for ANAVI Light Controller it is super easy to control 12V RGB LED strip from Home Assistant through your smartphone, tablet or personal computer.

Have a look at the video and follow the steps below to configure ANAVI Light Controller and change colors of 12V RGB LED strips from Home Assistant.

What Is Required?

The following hardware is required:

How to Install?

  • Install Mosquitto from Hass.io add-on store. Set username and password for login to Mosquitto. Set active Access Control Lists (ACL) for the username and launch Mosquitto (it is recommended to install SSH server prior this step).
  • Add MQTT integration in Home Assistant with enabled discovery (from Configuration > Integrations)
  • Attach the 12V RGB LED strip to ANAVI Light Controller
  • Ensure that ANAVI Light Controller has been flashed the latest version of the default Arduino sketch. If it is not, compile it and after that upload it following this video guide.
  • Turn on ANAVI Light Controller, connect to its WiFi Access Point (AP) and configure it through the captive portal. You must provide your WiFi credentials, MQTT server, username and password. After that ANAVI Light Controller will be automatically discovered by Home Assistant over MQTT.
  • Through Home Assistant change colors or effects of ANAVI Light Controller.

How Does It Work?

ANAVI Light Controller is powered by the ESP8266 microcontroller with WiFi. The default Arduino sketch works with the machine to machine protocol MQTT and implements Home Assistant discovery of MQTT Light component.

As soon as ANAVI Light Controller boots, after it has been configured, it connects to the WiFi network, after that to the MQTT broker and sends retained MQTT message with JSON payload that describes the device. Each ANAVI Light Controller has a unique MD5 ID based on the chip ID of ESP8266. The MQTT integration in Home Assistant discovers ANAVI Light Controller based on the received MQTT message. Thanks to the data in the JSON payload Home Assistant automatically configures the device as MQTT Light.

Home Assistant & 12V RGB LED strip attached to ANAVI Light Controller

Home Assistant discovery is a user-friendly way for quickly adding new Internet of Things to the platform. Combined with MQTT and the default firmware for ANAVI Light Controller the process is straight-forward and anyone can do it in a few minutes.

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