Autolab Lightsaber

A physical Lightsaber that displays the stress level of Autolab

Installation

Server

The server is incredibly easy to run with Docker.

1. Edit server/config.py to your liking. The most important thing to change the number of LEDs to the number of VIRTUAL LEDs on the physical lightsaber.
2. Copy or rename server/secret.py.template to server/secret.py and fill in the values.
3. Run docker compose up --build -d in the root directory of this repository.
4. The server should now be running on port 6333 bound to your host. You can connect to http://localhost:6333/ in a browser to test it.
5. By default, you'll need to provide a reverse proxy with SSL. I recommend Nginx, but covering that is outside the scope of this project. Without a reverse proxy, you'll need to disable "secure" on the WebSocket connection in the Arduino sketch:

// Towards the top of hardware/lightsaber.ino
WiFiClient wifiClient;
WebSocketClient ws(true); // Secure (use SSL)

WiFiClient wifiClient;
WebSocketClient ws(false); // Insecure (don't use SSL)

Hardware

I used an ESP8266, but any similar microcontroller should work.

1. Open hardware/lightsaber.ino in the Arduino IDE.
2. Edit the host, wsPort, wirelessSsid, and wirelessPassword variables to match your server config and WiFi network.
3. Edit the NUM_LEDS variable to the PHYSICAL number of LEDs on the lightsaber.
4. Edit the LED_FOLD_1 variable to be the final LED in the first segment of your LED strip with 2 folds, so it overlaps 3 times. For example, if your LED strip is 100 LEDs long, and you have 2 folds, you would set this to 33. If you have a different hardware configuration (such as different offsets than mine), it will require modifying the getPhysicalLedNumber function.
5. The default pin for the LED strip's data line is 5 (D1 on the ESP8266). Change this if necessary via #define LED_PIN. Several examples are provided and commented out.
6. You'll need to use my custom fork of the ESP8266 WebSocket Library. The original one doesn't handle HTTP headers correctly, so it's unlikely to work. It also requires SSL certificate verification, which I disabled for the purposes of this project. The minimal risk isn't worth the hassle of reflashing the ESP8266 every time the SSL certificate expires. Download my fork as a Zip archive from GitHub. In the Arduino IDE, go to Sketch > Include Library > Add .ZIP Library... and select the zip file you just downloaded.
7. Connect your microcontroller and click the upload button in the Arduino IDE.
8. Wait for that to finish, and you're all set! If you look at the serial output, you should see "Connected to websocket!" once everything is working.

TODO

• Program lighting animations
• Add photos of the hardware
• Add more details about the physical build
• Add 3D printable parts