Idea Dump

Chris Stratton

I would like to make a 16x32 or larger led display board

I would use something like this http://www.dhgate.com/product/led-rgb-64-32-pixels-indoor-full-color-full/375024076.html#s1-14-7b;searl|1071565168
but I need to know what else I would need besides the power supply can anyone offer advice ?

That seems potentially similar to a product Adafruit used to sell and posts some resources for at https://www.adafruit.com/product/420

Going by what is there, it may be easiest to interface by using an auxiliary microcontroller to drive the display, and then set the message over a serial or USB interface from the Omega. For example, Onion->Arduino->Display.

That's not to say that a direct connection is necessarily impossible, but unless you are designing a product, the effort in finding suitably precise control over enough I/Os and servicing them regularly is probably not worth the trouble compared to the cost of adding a helper micro, and even in a product, that helper micro could cost less than a dollar, while giving flexibility to replace the Omega with a different wifi solution in the future.

For that matter you could possibly build the whole thing around an ESP8266 instead, though you'd likely need a board that exposes almost all of the pins and not just the few of some boards.

Alec Stewart

@José-Luis-Cánovas now that you mention it, directly connecting them via GPIO seems a little convoluted when you could just do what you suggested. I could make a server rack, getting ethernet cables isn't an issue, getting a switch and a load balancer system isn't an isse, it's now just a matter of saving up and getting 3-5 more omega 2's, AND ethernet expansions. It sounds like a super awesome project to do though.

Zachary Haslam

I would like to build a functioning robot made with the Omega 2 plus. Are there coding languages that need to be downloaded?

Anil Kulkarni

I would like to build a digital photo frame with Instagram or Google photos feeding the photos.
Has somebody already done this?

Kim Schulz

I would love to build a simple setup where the onion2 can run on a battery and be placed in a park or similar. here it should log all "devices" that it sees when scanning for wifi/bt devices in the surrounding. I would like to have a bunch of these setups in the same park/plaza and use the logged data from all of them combined to do a sort of movement pattern analysis for the guests.

Jason Gong

I am trying to make a flexible digital led display, and I found one NEW LED "APA107 LED", so how can i make the display? and what kinds of controller/decoder i need?
datasheet for the APA107 LED,
http://www.newstar-ledstrip.com/product/20180602110954307.pdf

Walter Filho

1- I'd like to build a simple alarm clock using Omega2+.
It would display the current time in a 16x02 common "arduino display" (using Expansion board's GPIO), a common buzzer and blinking the Expansion board's built-in RGB LED.

2- Build a level gauge for a tank.
Where it can distinguish other and "heavier" liquids (in general, matte one) than upper water liquid (transparent one), measuring height of the "heavier" liquid without reporting the water height, just the other liquid.

Kris Sisk

So my "crazy idea of the week" is to build a module that will go in one of the GBIC slots on my Cisco 3524 switch to add wifi capability to it. I think that I could do this by marrying an existing 1000-base-T module for the switch and maybe (if the GBIC slot doesn't provide power/enough power) an external power source. Sadly, as much as I really want to do this and get rid of the consumer grade router that currently sticks around only to provide wifi I have neither the time nor a 1000-base-T module lying around.

ccs hello

@Kris-Sisk
C3524's GBIC slot expect to have an Ethernet PHY transceiver in it to complete its gigabit Ethernet NIC to talk to the outside world.
Omega2 has no role in playing as an Ethernet PHY, PERIOD.

Zain Aftab

I want to interface wireless module like cc1101 or cc2500 with onion omega. Both uses SPI interface, I am not an expert in technical instrument.Let me know if anyone is willing to do it.

Christian Curelea

Hi guys, I am working on a project that will use the onion as a router and show a captive portal every 30 minutes to display an Ad, survey, or promotion.

Let me know if you think if this is possible, I am playing around with Iptables and Nodogsplash.

Is this even possible to make?