Controlling RGB LED w/ RAMPS 1.4 as Feedback

Hi Guys!

I'm building a Delta. Is there a way to control a RGB LED from ther RAMPS 1.4 (multiple seperate would be nice). I'd like to be able to light the heated bed glass. Have the color change from Blue cold, to Red when it reaches temp. Maybe even a Blink when you are ready to print.

I think it would be fun, and could be used as feedback, Maybe even a different color LED for PLA or ABS.

But first, can an RGB LCD like a 3528 be easily wired into the RAMPS extra pinouts?

Thanks

Maxi

I'm also interested in doing this kind of thing. Any luck with getting this working?

If we are talking about a single 3528 surface mount LED, then it should be quite easy. Just add 3 resistors in line to drop voltage, and connect to some unused pins.

Depends on how much current it needs though, do you have a link to a part?

[www.ebay.com]

It was my understanding the LED strips had resisters built into the tape?

I was thinking about doing this with led tape but the code for the ardiuno is where I got stuck! Just don't know where to start haha.

disneytoy Wrote:
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> [www.ebay.com]
> RK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
>
> It was my understanding the LED strips had
> resisters built into the tape?

Ok, that is a different kettle of fish altogether. To control 5 amps you need a decent size MOSFET, and in fact three, one for R/G/B. It might be possible to hack the controller, but I would probably have to crack one open and reverse engineer it.

An open source RGB controller would be a nice little project. Maybe there is one around.

Though the LEDs come in a 5M strip. They are safely cut into 9 LED sections. Which I assume include the resistor. I believe in general use you just apply the 12v via a connector. No resistors are required. I'd prefer 1-2 LEDs, but the strips are cheap. Self adhesive.No soldering.

I don't want just pretty lights. I imagine the colored light would give visual feedback. Say, when the bed reaches temp it turns red.

I was thinking the i2c strips you get meaning it could do some fancy chases while idle/ lights up as the print finishes.

Hola everyone !!

Trying to received a RGB color as feedback as weel , for temperature and other thing like standby, endstop... I bought a blinkm module and uploaded this part in marlin :

[github.com]

The color control through the gcode is working well and I would like to know if someone could explain me how to get feedback from differents state of the printer ?

I try to look arround but didnt find much about it... Thank you very much !!!

gxo.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2013 10:52PM by gxo.

UP ! no one ??

Ok, either it's a feature that is already in the firmware or you will have to write it into the firmware. If it's not there already, get out the compiler. You will need to put hooks into the code that generates the state info and link them into the light driver.

Hi uncle bob thanks for answering !!

The feature is already wrote, controlling RGB led through the i2c, actually I'm sending the color's codes in a slicer in order to get a progressive color/temperature match. But its a long way to get it really progressive..
How can I put those hooks for the extruder temperature for example ?

You need to go into the C code for the temperature control and decide which states in the code you want to export to the light driver. Normally I'd do it by defining a few variables in RAM and letting the temp control code change them You then need to go into the light driver code and make it aware of those variables. I'd probably do it by setting up an alternate way to feed the driver, if one is not already there. Finally you need some sort of flag in the timer interrupt chain to let the light driver code know it's time to update things. You only want to change the lights every so often. If you have experience writing Arduino C it's a bit of work, but not terribly complex. In the end you could try to get the mods merged into the main distribution, or simply maintain them on your independent branch of the code.