Make Filtet A Colorful Communicator Using Blink1 in Linux
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 2:04 am
Overview
Sometimes simple things are quite cool. Blink1 by ThingM is such a simple and cool device. Blink1's manufacturer calls it a "USB LED Notification Light". In actuality, it is small USB dongle which gives a computer the ability to communicate using a wide variety of colors and blink patterns.
See: https://blink1.thingm.com/
Possible uses for Blink1 include:
* Indicate CPU Temperature Using Color
* Indicate SSD Temperature Using Color
* Indicate Server Crashes
* Indicate Computer Loading
* Indicate Arrival of Email
* Indicate Messages on Social Media
* Many More
Hardware
From a hardware perspective, Blink1 is very simple. Its component complement is spartan - consisting of a micro-controller and 2 RGB LEDs. It also includes contains 3 through-holes on the PCB which can be used for connecting additional LEDs.
Software
Blink1 features good software support. Among the available packages are a GUI control app called Blink1Control, a command line tool called Blink1-tool, and a host of APIs for a good variety of programming languages.
Unfortunately, the Blink1Control App is not available for Linux (Mac OS X and Windows only), so this application note for uses the command line tool, blink1-tool. Blink1-tool runs well on my Fitlet in Linux Mint.
Installing Blink1-Tool
The installation is simple and straightforward:
1. Navigate to
https://github.com/todbot/blink1/releases
and download the latest release.
2. Extract the zip file into a directory of your choice.
3. Modify your udev rules according to the instructions found at
https://github.com/todbot/blink1/blob/m ... ink1.rules
so you won't have to run blink1-tools as a root user.
Using blink1-tools is relatively self explanatory as you can see in the following screenshot.
Sometimes simple things are quite cool. Blink1 by ThingM is such a simple and cool device. Blink1's manufacturer calls it a "USB LED Notification Light". In actuality, it is small USB dongle which gives a computer the ability to communicate using a wide variety of colors and blink patterns.
See: https://blink1.thingm.com/
Possible uses for Blink1 include:
* Indicate CPU Temperature Using Color
* Indicate SSD Temperature Using Color
* Indicate Server Crashes
* Indicate Computer Loading
* Indicate Arrival of Email
* Indicate Messages on Social Media
* Many More
Hardware
From a hardware perspective, Blink1 is very simple. Its component complement is spartan - consisting of a micro-controller and 2 RGB LEDs. It also includes contains 3 through-holes on the PCB which can be used for connecting additional LEDs.
Software
Blink1 features good software support. Among the available packages are a GUI control app called Blink1Control, a command line tool called Blink1-tool, and a host of APIs for a good variety of programming languages.
Unfortunately, the Blink1Control App is not available for Linux (Mac OS X and Windows only), so this application note for uses the command line tool, blink1-tool. Blink1-tool runs well on my Fitlet in Linux Mint.
Installing Blink1-Tool
The installation is simple and straightforward:
1. Navigate to
https://github.com/todbot/blink1/releases
and download the latest release.
2. Extract the zip file into a directory of your choice.
3. Modify your udev rules according to the instructions found at
https://github.com/todbot/blink1/blob/m ... ink1.rules
so you won't have to run blink1-tools as a root user.
Using blink1-tools is relatively self explanatory as you can see in the following screenshot.