Introduction: Make an Instructables Indicator

By Seeed
About: Howdy, we are application engineers in Seeed. Sharing projects with the maker community is awesome. Hope you like it XD Seeed is the IoT hardware enabler providing services that empower IoT developers to swift…

Instructables is really an awesome place to share your awesome project. There’s so many makers here to share their works.

I had made many instructable as well, I will feel excite when my instructable get a large views or favorites. Especially when you first post your instructable, you will always go to the page and see if someone like it.

I still remember when I post my first instructable years ago, it’s a project about Arduino, I made a phone with Arduino. It’s called ArduinoPhone, even today I can get some comments from it, and I am glad to help others to make their own phone with Arduino.

Now, I will share my latest instructable, it’s a beautiful device that you can put it on the desk. It’s named Instructables Indicator. With this instructable, you can know if people like your instructable, if your instructable get featured.

This application contains the below function:

  • Connecting to Wi-Fi
  • A 320x240 TFT display to show the message
  • Include Views, Favorites and Comments.
  • When your instructable get featured, the leds on the base will turn on

If you like Instructables and write instructables, you will like this idea. I will share the process to make it, as well as the code, all things is open sources.

Then let’s started, happy MAKING.

Step 1: How Does It Work

There’s a 320x240 TFT display to show the views, favorites and comments. And it’s real-time updating.

There’re 2 leds on eyes, when the data change, it will blink about 1s.

There’re 5 ws2812b led on the base, when your instructables get featured, the leds will shine with rainbow, it’s beautiful if you turn off the light off in the evening.

More details please refer to the image above.

Step 2: Prepare the Stuff

There's something need to be prepared first.

Electrical Patrs

LinkIt ONE

The LinkIt ONE development board is an open source, high performance board for prototyping Wearables and IoT devices. It's based on the world's leading SoC for Wearables, MediaTek Aster (MT2502) combined with high performance Wi-Fi (MT5931) and GPS (MT3332) chipsets to provide you with access to all the features of MediaTek LinkIt. It also provides similar pin-out features to Arduino boards, making it easy for you to connect to various sensors, peripherals, and Arduino shields.

2.8'' TFT Touch Shield V2.0

This is a multifunctional Arduino/Seeeduino/Arduino Mega compatible resistive touch screen. We replaced the screen driver with a more professional chip, ILI9341 driver, providing different pin-saving SPI communication without sacrificing the data transmitting speed. Due to the communication method change, programs developed for the original version need modifications before being transplanted to the new version. With a SD card module integrated also on this shield, this shield reserves great room for other expansions to your project.

Grove Joint

Grove - Joint v2.0 shares many similarities with Seeeduino Lotus. It is a mini ATMEGA328 Microcontroller development board. It uses an Atmel ATMEGA328P-MU and CH340. ATMEGA328P-MU is a high performance, low power AVR 8-Bit Microcontroller. CH340 is a USB bus converter chip that can realize a USB to serial interface. Grove - Joint v2.0 has two Grove interfaces included I2C port and two digital I/Os. It else support battery powered. You can do some simple applications with it.

WS2812B Led

WS2812 is an intelligent control LED light source that the control circuit and RGB chip are integrated in a package of 5050 components. It includes intelligent digital port data latch and signal reshaping amplification drive circuit. Also include a precision internal oscillator and a 12V voltage programmable constant current control part, effectively ensuring the pixel point light color height consistent.

Acrylic and Laser Cutter

  • 3mm wooden board
  • 3mm Lucency Acrylic

As for the Laser cutter, you can find one easily in a Hacker Space, if there's no hacker space near to you, you can try the Laser Cutting Service supply by Seeed.

The Others

  • 5mm Green Led x 2
  • M3 screws x 4
  • M3 nut x 4
  • AB glue

Step 3: Cut the Wooden Board and Acrylic

We will cut the wooden board and acrylic first.

Please download the 2d file here.

You will get 6 parts of wooden board and one acrylic.

Step 4: Paint the Instructables Logo

To make it more nice looking, we need to do some painting.

It’s not a very hard work, don’t afraid about that. Just watch the logo, and paint.

Step 5: Install the Wooden

After this step, the appearance is almost ready.

First connect part 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 together, just as shown in the image.

As the board is unstable, you need some glue to cling it.

Step 6: Install WS2812 Leds and Grove Joint

First, find a Grove cables and solder to the

WS2812 led:

  • Red > Vcc
  • Black > Gnd
  • Yellow > Di

We need some 3M glue stick here. Just stick the things to the base.

As shown in the images.

Step 7: Install a DC Input Interface

We need to find a DC input connector here, if you can’t find one, never mind, you can power the LinkIt ONE via a micro USB cable directly.

First, solder some cables, to connect VCC/GND of LinkIt ONE to the connector.

Then stick the connector the hole o PART6.

Step 8: Install Tft Display and Led on the Eye

Install TFT Display on the back of PART1. You may need some AB glue here.

As shown in the image.

Step 9: Connecting the Cables

There’s 2 Grove connector onboard of LinkIt ONE, UART and I2C, those pin can be act as normal GPIO.

  • D0/D1 > LED+
  • GND > LED-
  • SCL of LinkIt ONE > SCL of Joint
  • WS2812 LED > D5 of Joint

Step 10: Software Work

I had sent my code to github, click to open the page.

If this is your first to use LinkIt ONE, put hand on Wiki of LinkIt ONE to get started. LinkIt ONE is an Arduino compatible board with so many strong function.

After you download the code, there’s something need to set. Detail refer to the image above.

How to get URL:

Open the page of your instructable, you can find it in the browse input box, remember that what we need is /id/your_instructable_name/.

How to get ajax code.

First, right-click of your web page, click View page source.

Ctrl+F, find LogHit, then you find it. Refer to the image abot.

Then upload the code to LinkIt ONE. Magic things will happen.

Step 11: Make It Better

There are some functions I want to do in the feature, but l don’t have time recently. I am glad that if someone the help to improve it, you can make a pull request in my Github page.

  • Show all the instructables you had made
  • Record the details data of your instructable, and then storage to the flash of LinkIt ONE, there’s a 10M flash. And can be read as a U-Disk.
  • When you got a comments, you can receive a SMS
  • When your instructable get a certain count of views/favorites/comments, you get a SMS.