RGB Lighting Interface

[Geps]

Hi,

I'm renovating my house at the moment and was very keen on the RGB LED lights. With all my other lightning to be controlled by the quad dimmer modules I couldn't find a way to interface these lights to my (future!) Idranet.

Talking to toscal on here he said he had a couple of RS232 based RGB lightning controllers so I just needed a way to link Cortex to the serial port.

Talking to Karam and Viv at Idratek they suggested a method of using a virtual quad dimmer - virtual because it only existed in Cortex (turn off the network enabled option). You can then route commands to the device with Cortex and use the Cortex API to pick up these commands and send data to the serial port.

So that's what I did!

Attached below is some very rough VB.net code. My background is embedded C and whilst I had a go at C# I just didn't want to take the time to fully teach myself. At this stage it's purely designed as a proof of concept and I'll be adding features onto it as and when I get time but it works so thought I'd post it here for others to use should they wish.

I took Karam's idea and extended it....instead of using the individual dimmer values, at the moment I'm using a single dimmer channel equated to a colour. The idea being that if you want the whole house orange you set a single value rather than each individual R G B one making it slightly easier to use.

In the future I'll be

• Tidying up this code
• Adding RS485 interface so multiple units can share the same bus
• Creating a rough UI so I can change settings without needing to keep hitting compile

Screenshot:


VB.net code (compiled with VS2010 Professional SP1):

Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Public Class TestCortexAPIForm
    Declare Auto Function SendMessage Lib "user32" ( _
        ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, _
        ByVal Msg As Integer, _
        ByVal wParam As Integer, _
        ByVal lParam As Integer) As Integer
    Declare Auto Function RegisterWindowMessage Lib "User32.Dll" _
       (ByVal lpString As String) As Integer
    Structure CopyDataStruct
        Public ID As String
        Public Length As Int32
        Public Data As String
    End Structure
    Const CortexControlAPIDiscover = "CortexAPIDiscover"
    Const CortexControlAPIAttach = "CortexAPIAttach"
    Const WM_COPYDATA = &H4A
    Dim UM_CortexControlAPIDiscover As UInt32
    Dim UM_CortexControlAPIAttach As UInt32
    Dim HWND_BROADCAST As Long = -1
    Dim MyCortexHandle As IntPtr = IntPtr.Zero
    Dim CortexAPIActive As Boolean
    Dim ReceivedMessage As String
    Dim aCDS As CopyDataStruct
    Dim BoardAddress As Byte
    Dim TransmitBuffer() As Byte = {&HFE, &H4C, &H42, &H2, &HFF}

    Private Sub TestCortexAPIForm_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        UM_CortexControlAPIDiscover = RegisterWindowMessage(CortexControlAPIDiscover)
        UM_CortexControlAPIAttach = RegisterWindowMessage(CortexControlAPIAttach)
        Device_Init()

    End Sub

    Protected Overrides Sub WndProc(ByRef m As System.Windows.Forms.Message)
        If m.Msg = UM_CortexControlAPIAttach Then
            If (m.LParam = 1) And (m.WParam <> Handle) Then
                Log("< WM_CortexAPIAttach")
                MyCortexHandle = m.WParam
                CortexAPIActive = True
            End If
            m.Result = New IntPtr(1) 'Ensure returned response is correct
        Else
            If m.Msg = UM_CortexControlAPIDiscover Then
                If m.LParam = 1 Then
                    If (m.WParam <> Me.Handle) Then
                        MyCortexHandle = m.WParam
                        CortexAPIActive = True
                        Log("< WM_CortexAPIDiscover")
                        Log("> WM_CortexAPIAttach")
                        SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, UM_CortexControlAPIAttach, Handle, IntPtr.Zero)
                    End If
                End If
                m.Result = New IntPtr(1) 'Ensure returned response is correct
            Else
                If m.Msg = WM_COPYDATA Then
                    If m.WParam = MyCortexHandle Then
                        aCDS = m.GetLParam(GetType(CopyDataStruct))
                        ReceivedMessage = aCDS.Data
                        Log("< " & ReceivedMessage)
                        If ReceivedMessage = "Disconnect" Then
                            CortexAPIActive = False
                        Else
                            If ReceivedMessage = "Close" Then
                                Me.Close()
                            End If
                        End If
                        m.Result = New IntPtr(1) 'Ensure returned response is correct
                    End If
                Else
                    MyBase.WndProc(m)
                End If
            End If
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub TestCortexAPIForm_Shown(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Shown
        Log("> WM_CortexAPIDiscover")
        SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, UM_CortexControlAPIDiscover, Handle, IntPtr.Zero)
    End Sub

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Command(TextBox1.Text)
    End Sub

    Private Sub Command(ByVal theCommand As String) 'USE THIS TO SEND COMMANDS TO CORTEX
        If theCommand <> "" And CortexAPIActive Then
            Log("> " & theCommand)
            aCDS.ID = "1"
            aCDS.Data = theCommand
            aCDS.Length = aCDS.Data.Length + 1
            Dim lParam As IntPtr
            lParam = Marshal.AllocCoTaskMem(Marshal.SizeOf(aCDS))
            Marshal.StructureToPtr(aCDS, lParam, False)
            SendMessage(MyCortexHandle, WM_COPYDATA, Me.Handle, lParam)
            Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(lParam) ' Free allocated memory
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub Log(ByVal AString As String)
        TextBox2.AppendText(vbCrLf & DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString & " " & AString)
        LastReceivedResponse.Text = AString
    End Sub

    Private Sub TestCortexAPIForm_FormClosing(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.FormClosingEventArgs) Handles MyBase.FormClosing
        Command("Disconnect")
    End Sub

    ' Modify to suit your setup
    Private Sub Device_Init()
    SerialPort1.BaudRate = 9600
    SerialPort1.PortName = "COM5"
    SerialPort1.DataBits = 8
    SerialPort1.Parity = IO.Ports.Parity.None
    BoardAddress = &H4C

    'Set data
    TransmitBuffer(1) = BoardAddress
    End Sub

Private Sub set_rgb_value(ByVal RedValue, ByVal GreenValue, ByRef BlueValue)
    If (SerialPort1.IsOpen = False) Then
        SerialPort1.Open()
    End If

    Debug.Print("Setting RGB Values:" & RedValue & " " & GreenValue & " " & BlueValue)


    TransmitBuffer(3) = 1
    TransmitBuffer(4) = RedValue
    SerialPort1.Write(TransmitBuffer, 0, TransmitBuffer.Length)
    'System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(20)

    TransmitBuffer(3) = 2
    TransmitBuffer(4) = GreenValue
    SerialPort1.Write(TransmitBuffer, 0, TransmitBuffer.Length)
    'System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(20)

    TransmitBuffer(3) = 3
    TransmitBuffer(4) = BlueValue
    SerialPort1.Write(TransmitBuffer, 0, TransmitBuffer.Length)

    'System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(20)

    'SerialPort1.Close()
End Sub




Private Sub process_command(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles LastReceivedResponse.TextChanged
    Dim CommandToProcess(2) As String

        If (LastReceivedResponse.Text.Contains("Dimmer")) Then
            Debug.Print("LED RGB")
        End If
        If (LastReceivedResponse.Text.Contains("Lounge Dimmer 1.Set Level (Output)")) Then
            ' Exact colour
        CommandToProcess = LastReceivedResponse.Text.Split("=")
            Select Case Convert.ToDecimal(CommandToProcess(1))
                Case 100 ' colour
                            set_rgb_value(10, 255, 255)

                Case 10 ' white
                            set_rgb_value(255, 255, 255)
            End Select
        End If
End Sub



Private Sub TrackBar2_Scroll(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles rgbBlue.Scroll
    set_rgb_value(rgbRed.Value, rgbGreen.Value, rgbBlue.Value)
End Sub

Private Sub rgbRed_Scroll(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles rgbRed.Scroll
    set_rgb_value(rgbRed.Value, rgbGreen.Value, rgbBlue.Value)
End Sub

Private Sub rgbGreen_Scroll(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles rgbGreen.Scroll
    set_rgb_value(rgbRed.Value, rgbGreen.Value, rgbBlue.Value)
End Sub
End Class

3 trackbars are used to provide a quick method of updating and testing colour combinations.


Cheers,

[toscal]

Does this mean I need to get some more RGB RS232 interfaces in then .

[Geps]

I'm good for the foreseeable future - not looking to get everything up and running until summer next year as there is still loads to do!

Others may though