PanL

From Syncleus Wiki

Personalized Ambient Network Link

PanL (pronounced "panel") is a customizable interactive ambient display that can dynamically display information sent to it across a mesh network. It can be instructed to display information in the form of light patterns, sound patterns, and a LCD. It can be configured to display any information you'd like from other computers on the network. The focus is on customizable & flexible design. Light patterns can be programed to correspond to an alert with any combination of colors, wave patterns, frequencies, amplitudes, and phases to produce any pattern of light. The LCD can display a corresponding message and receive a response from on board push buttons which are relayed back to the server which issued the message and can be handled accordingly.

The PanL device can be used to display all sorts of information. For example it can be configured to display the daily weather by using various light patterns like flashing white for snow, flashing blue for thunder storms, solid blue for rain, green for cool days, and red for hot days. Another example would be to have the device play a tone when an email arrives. Yet another example would be displaying status of a stock you own by flashing the light green when its going up (the faster it flashes the faster your stock is going up) and red when its going down.

The PanL currently uses XBee (an implementation of Zigbee) mesh networking allowing it to talk to the rest of the world. The intention however is to release OpenMesh as a separate project to improve and replace Zigbee mesh networking. But until OpenMesh is released and mature enough to use in this project we will continue to use XBee. However since this project is Open Source and Open Hardware developers will be welcome to continue to use XBee well after we have switched to OpenMesh technology. In fact part of the intention is to make the project modular to allow developers to mix and match the functionality they want without forcing a specific set of features.

Here are some of the features currently implemented in the design:

XBee Implementation of Zigbee Mesh Network
High Intensity RGB LED
Backlit LCD Display
4 Push Button Inputs
Quartz Crystal Timing for Built in Clock
Advanced Function Generator for Complex Light Patterns
Small Physical Footprint (3" x 4")
Cheap to Build
Atmel AVR Core

PanL is provided under the OSCL Type-C license.

The SVN is the best place for obtaining the latest source. However if you use the SVN for obtaining and using the source please consider providing feedback so we can take your suggestions into consideration.

If you need any help installing, compiling, or patching this software in any way at all please feel free to contact us or visit our IRC channel (information below). We cant promise support, but we do encourage you to try. We will do our best to offer our help.

Resources

Latest Distribution:
No releases yet, please use the SVN.

All Versions:
No releases yet, please use the SVN.

Additional Documentation:
Media & Demos

Public SVN:
svn://svn.syncleus.com/PanL

Bug Reporting & Development Status:
TRAC reporting
Hudson Continuous Integration reporting

IRC Support:
Visit our IRC channel on freenode in the #PanL channel.
#PanL logs on freenode