Introduction
Blinky has been my longest running project. The ideas started to form well over a year ago, and I started in June of 2023. It stalled out in the middle because I didn’t know how to build the trap and because I was finishing up my work life and transitioning into a new, post-work life. Along the way, this project has helped set a theme for future projects on my patio and lead to so many ideas of what else can be done.
The Idea
A couple of years ago, I started exploring Tiki drinks. This brought me into contact with Tiki bars. I always had an interest in prop making, but never found the time. I started to mull around ideas for my own patio theming. While Tiki is nice, I’m really not into the full hard core Tiki design styling. I am…into cartoons, whimsy and the weird. At some point, the idea of the classic lit puffer fish in a fish trap morphed into The Simpson’s Blinky in a fish trap with smart LEDs for the eyes and for general lighting.
Implementation and Design Choices
My ability to sculp in 3D is still mostly non existent. Hunting around, I found a pretty good model. It had a decent body and the eyes were separate components. I decided to print the body with filament and use my resin printer to be able to print the eyes in a clear component. Lots of time, Bondo putty, sanding and painting, I got a pretty good result. To get wiring into this model I drilled out support areas in the body and clipped off that back portion of the eyes.
Tip: Around this time, I learned through my Lantern project that the LEDs can fail. While, since that initial failure burst it has stabilized, I realized that I need to be able to get to each of the LEDs to replace them if they fail. Therefore, Blinky’s eyes are only held in with tiny dab of glue that should break away with a little force.
The trap portion of the project was much more problematic. I wanted to either buy and adapt something, or make something that was fairly simple. After wandering around stores and online, I didn’t really find what I wanted…or at least, what I wanted for a reasonable price. My Fusion 360 skills were progressing, so one day I sat down and just designed it based on ideas I found online. The result wasn’t bad. With the help of floral binding wire and hot melt glue, it came together. I took some fishing net, hit it with a little stain and attached it as well.
The contents of the trap can be accessed through the trap opening and the back ring, which can be removed by undoing the floral binding. The LED strip has a clear plastic covering to prevent water from sitting on the contacts, but I dread what replacing one of those LEDs will be like. The overall trap can be taken down by unplugging it and removing the wire support lines.
The electrical was work, but was the most straight forward aspect of the project. I’m using the same WLED, on an ESP32 to drive the WS2812B LEDs. I went with 5V LEDs because that’s what the ESP32 used for power. With the Lanterns that hasn’t been a bad choice. However, the box to hold the electronics turned into a separate side quest.
The software side of this project has slowed me down in recent weeks. I really want to use one of the off the shelf lighting control systems. There are both open source solutions that are mostly designed for Christmas lights. However, I want to be able to add more programmatic elements and a level of dynamic behaviors that I was finding difficult in the other packages. So, I am writing my own. I’m sure, one day, it will be tossed for a better approach.
I should probably do a separate progress post on this, but a lot of the code is still spinning. In short, I took a low-code framework, called Node-Red as my scripting tool and added custom nodes to access LEDs and all of my lighting (flood lights, patio lights, ect.). I also created a functional, but ugly monitor/simulation page where I can build out the scripts and test them without having to wait until night time and see the real world results. I suspect the flows will get complicated over time. This is the logic for blinking, Blinky’s eyes:
At the moment, I don’t have the trap lights doing anything, but that will change over time.
Conclusion
While this project took a long time to complete, it got there. And, along the way, I built new skills and came up with ideas for future projects, which is the real purpose of this work. I think there are still some tweaks to do. For example, Blinky, blinks too often. I’ll probably make that a bit more subtle over time.
It is summer time here in Arizona, which means outdoor time isn’t fun. And, I have a bathroom project to finish. However, once the bathroom project is done, I will be doing more work on the patio. I have recently installed colored Hue lights in the patio and added 8 color flood lights to the yard. These can be controlled by the same Animation Manager code…so, I’ll be spending some time setting up the lighting side of the environment. All of these projects should be showing up on this site over the next couple of months.
Links to the various progress posts