Modifying an Olympia Infoglobe to Allow Control of IR Signals #1895
Replies: 4 comments 10 replies
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I wish I remembered more about how I did this. However, you will likely need to drive your IR led with more than a normal LED needs. There is an example diagram using a transistor @ https://github.com/mdhiggins/ESP8266-HTTP-IR-Blaster I don't think I used this exact one, but it should work. Also, here is all the code I could find. I think this code wasn't my final code, but should be working. Either way, it looks like I took some basic notes in there. Sadly, there is no confirmation on what I did on the hardware side. I don't think it matters much outside of driving the IR led though. |
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Thank you so much for getting back to me about this! There is so little information about how to do this sort of thing on the internet, and even the information that is available is not really accessible to those of us without a hardware background. The links you provided seem like they would both be helpful, but it still leaves the issue of how to integrate the mod into the Infoglobe hardware. I have absolutely zero understanding of how that would be done. Are you willing and/or able to share photos of your configuration? Unless of course you no longer have the globe in question? I've reached out to @kongmunist about the globe as well, as he recently did a mod that is very similar to what I am hoping to achieve. The article about it is available here, but unfortunately, it isn't enough (even with the citations he provided) for me to figure out what to do. |
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You are in luck! You have 3 main tasks if you want to get it going. 1. Find 5v to run your 8266. Just probe around, it's there on the stationary part somewhere. 2. Disable the old ir led. I would have to look but I think I desoldered it. 3. Place your 8266 and it led where the old one was. Look where the receiver on the spinning arm is and line it up with that somewhere. That should be all you need really. You aren't interfacing much with the real hardware and this is what the guy you linked also did |
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Well, at least that simplifies it a little bit, although even with this, it's going to be quite a reach for me. Seeing pictures of a setup that someone else has already done would really help. What was your modded globe capable of doing? Did you connect it to the internet? |
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Yes, but the code I gave made a local webserver which you gave a message.
At one point a made a version that pulled time and weather and rotated
through those. The weather service has since become pay and the code
doesn't do anything now.
…On Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 5:02 PM David Berdik ***@***.***> wrote:
Well, at least that simplifies it a little bit, although even with this,
it's going to be quite a reach for me. Seeing pictures of a setup that
someone else has already done would really help.
What was your modded globe capable of doing? Did you connect it to the
internet?
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I mean, if you're willing to share the broken code, it would still be useful to me. I can handle parsing through broken code. It's the hardware mods that are a problem for me! Thank you for the information you've provided, by the way. I have several more questions:
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@greenmikey Would you happen to have any idea why the following modified version of your code doesn't seem to be doing anything to the IR LED, but the IR LED blinks when the reset button on the ESP is pushed? As far as I can tell, the only reason that this would be an issue is if the wrong GPIO pin is defined for /*
* ESP8266 NodeMCU AJAX Demo
* Updates and Gets data from webpage without page refresh
*/
#include <IRremoteESP8266.h>
#include <IRsend.h>
#define LED 2 //On board LED
#define IR_LED 4 // ESP8266 GPIO pin to use. Recommended: 4 (D2).
IRsend irsend(IR_LED); // (pin, not inverted, and use modulation) Set the GPIO to be used to sending the message.
String readText;
unsigned int khz = 38; // 38kHz carrier frequency for infoglobe
unsigned char header[] = {0x04}; //0x01: static, 0x04: scrolling
unsigned char message[35] = {"Thank you very much Crankyoldgit"};
void handleMessage() {
Serial.println("In handleMessage()");
readText = "This is a test."; //Refer xhttp.open("GET", "setLED?LEDstate="+led, true);
Serial.print("Current Message: ");
Serial.println(readText);
memset(&message[0], 0, sizeof(message));
for (int j = 0; j < readText.length(); ++j) {
message[j] = readText[j];
}
for (int i = 0; i < sizeof(message); ++i) {
if (message[i] == 0x00) {
Serial.println("null char");
}
else {
Serial.println(message[i]);
}
}
sendHexRaw(header, 1, 38); //header at 38kHz
sendHexRaw(message, readText.length(), 38); // Send a raw data capture at 38kHz.
digitalWrite(IR_LED, LOW);
delay(100);
}
void setup(void){
//Serial.begin(115200);
Serial.begin(115200, SERIAL_8N1); // I'm still not sure what arg 2 does here.
readText = "Thank you very much Crankyoldgit";
Serial.println("In setup()");
//Onboard LED port Direction output
pinMode(LED,OUTPUT);
irsend.begin();
handleMessage();
}
// The internet tells me that loop() isn't mandatory to have, but the compiler freaks out when I
// remove it, so I'm forced to leave the stub here.
void loop(void){}
void sendHexRaw(unsigned char *sigArray, unsigned int sizeArray, unsigned int khz) {
/* HEADER - the byte determines the transition effect
When debugging note that first four bits of header should always be '0'
00 - loads message to buffer for transition effect
01 - Static message - blanks without message
02 - Flashing static message
03 - matches static/scroll of previous message
04 - scrolling (blanks without message)
05 - Overwrite portion of existing message
06 - Toggles scrolling when sent without a message
MESSAGE - 35 characters max - if sending a message each byte is an ASCII character.
characters not supported: % & + ; @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~
see http://hanixdiy.blogspot.com/2010/10/hacking-infoglobe-part-3.html for more details
*/
uint32_t sigTime = micros();
uint32_t delayTime;
irsend.enableIROut(khz,33);
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sizeArray; i++) { //iterate thru each byte in sigArray
register uint8_t bitMask = 0x80; //starting value of bitmask fo each Hex byte
while (bitMask) { //do 8 times for each bit of the 8 bit byte
sigTime += 1000; //Time 1ms after our last operation (or start)
delayTime = sigTime - micros(); //The difference between current time and 1ms after our last bit
if (bitMask & sigArray[i]) { //its a One bit
irsend.space(delayTime); // LED off for 1000 usec = 1msec
//Serial.print('1'); //for debug - ruins timing but ensures you use the correct bits
}
else { // its a Zero bit
irsend.mark(delayTime);
//Serial.print('0'); //for debug - ruins timing but ensures you use the correct bits
}
bitMask = (unsigned char) bitMask >> 1; // shift mask bit along until it reaches zero > exit the loop
}
}
} |
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Hi David, How exciting to meet a fellow Infoglobe hacker!! I'm afraid I wrote up the Hackaday instructions more quickly than I should have — looking back on it, they’re not detailed enough on their own to reproduce anything I did. I've always been meaning to write up a tutorial on this thing, so this is a perfect opportunity. Since you're most concerned with the hardware, I wrote up the hardware side of the tutorial on my blog I can also post another tutorial on the software if you have trouble getting that part working as well. Let me know! |
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Indeed! What's even cooler is, I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and we both live in the same city. What are the chances of that?
Thank you for writing this post! This is the first "Infoglobe modding for dummies" article that I've seen. All of the other ones are way too verbose for non-hardware folks.
I would certainly like to see the software components as well. Unfortunately, the component of the software that actually handles the transmission of the IR control signals is out of reach for me as well. If/when I manage to get that far, my intention has been to take code that has already been written for sending control signals and modify it to perform different functionality. One of the things I'd like to do that I haven't seen done in any existing mods is integrate the globe with Alexa's announcements system so that when someone sends an Alexa announcement, it is scrolled on the globe. |
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@kongmunist Since writing my earlier reply, I've thought of some additional questions for you:
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Ah unfortunately I don't live in Pittsburgh any more, I've moved to Switzerland for more school. Re: the IR sending code, I have mildly OOPy code for sending arbitrary messages into the infoglobe, as long as you have an arduino and are willing to fiddle with the timings manually (clocks are not perfect + my code is not perfect = timing offsets for long messages that won't get parsed properly). Happy to write this part as well, but please send me an email so I don't forget. For your other questions:
If you play your cards right, you don't even need to do the hosting for the dynamic site. Mine is done with a Flask server deployed on pythonanywhere, bless their free service. Raspberry Pi would be just another thing to set up. If you don't mind, I'm curious to hear what you want to do with the CID system after reviving it |
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Aww that's very unfortunate. I was kind of hoping that you'd potentially be interested in meeting in person to discuss this!
Sure! I'll send you an e-mail immediately after posting this. Even if the code is buggy, that's fine. At least it will give me a foundation to build off of. I don't have enough expertise to measure what the timings are like on my globe, so I imagine I would just be trying random values until I land on something that works. Although, my hope is that your code for that will more or less just work out of the box. How often do you encounter errors when attempting to parse long messages? Also, when writing your code, did you look at or borrow anything from other code that a few other Infoglobe modders have shared online? And here are my follow-ups for your question responses:
That is a pretty awesome setup! I would love to replicate that.
So, it looks like you can specify transition effects up to a point, but you can't, for example, specify exactly what kind of transition animation you want to use. For example, you can't define whether you want the transition animation to be the "letter swap" animation or the "old message scrolls away and new message scrolls in" animation?
From what I remember, the battery compartment is used for retaining globe time when it is powered off. At least, that is how mine works. Anyway, it's fine. If the globe is going to be connected to the internet, there's really no need to worry about storing the time locally anyway! I just wondered how you went about it.
Even though it doesn't get used much, I do still have a landline in my house, and I would kind of like to have CID working on my globe in some way. A while ago, I found this article describing how to use a Raspberry Pi to record audio from a landline phone. As far as I understand, this setup can be modified to read caller ID as well. If I get the globe working, one of the things I'd like to do is try doing a modified version of this project that reads the caller ID and sends the data to the globe for displaying. I think it could also be neat to extend the project to make calls over the landline via the network.
If you do end up trying this, could you please share what the outcome is?
Thanks for sharing! It was fun to look at the example messages. It's been a while since I've worked with C++, but I do recall that even simple things like string manipulation can be rather ugly to work with. Based on what you've said about resources here, I'll be happy if I can just get the microcontroller to run an HTTP server or even just a pure TCP server that listens for incoming messages and displays them and then, as you said, use either PythonAnywhere or something running locally on my network to handle determining what to transmit to the globe for displaying.
I certainly don't mind! I have several things I'd like to do with it. I would like the core functionality for the globe to be rotating through displaying time from the internet, showing the outside temperature as well as a brief summary about the weather conditions, stock market information when appropriate, and perhaps news headlines. I'm fine with losing CID functionality through the phone line, but I would really like to eventually restore it with the supplementary project I shared earlier in this reply. I think the most ambitious thing I'd like to do with it though is give it integration with Alexa's announcements system. I am not sure how familiar you are with Alexa, but one of the features of it is the ability for intercom-like announcements to be broadcasted to all Alexa devices as well as in the form of notifications on phones that have the Alexa app installed. Whenever someone in my family sends an announcement via Alexa, I would like the globe to be able to pick it up and display the text version of the announcement. There's a very nice tutorial I found on how to set Alexa up on a Raspberry Pi, and I believe I can do a modified version of the project that would allow me to capture the text of an announcement and transmit it to the globe. Obviously the globe can't be turned in to a full-on Alexa device, but it would be nice to have this tiny little integration with it. |
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First thing to consider would be that IR Leds shoudln't be giving off
visible light. Look at it with your phone camera, that should pick up the
light and squish it into the visible spectrum. Some lower quality IR leds
might show some light. If that does not work, I would cut everything out of
the code until you just turn on the LED. Then you can figure out what is
wrong. Start adding things back after you get the basics.
…On Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 7:24 PM David Berdik ***@***.***> wrote:
@greenmikey <https://github.com/greenmikey> Would you happen to have any
idea why the following modified version of your code doesn't seem to be
doing anything to the IR LED, but the IR LED blinks when the reset button
on the ESP is pushed? As far as I can tell, the only reason that this would
be an issue is if the wrong GPIO pin is defined for IR_LED, but I am
using D2.
/* * ESP8266 NodeMCU AJAX Demo * Updates and Gets data from webpage without page refresh */
#include <IRremoteESP8266.h>
#include <IRsend.h>
#define LED 2 //On board LED
#define IR_LED 4 // ESP8266 GPIO pin to use. Recommended: 4 (D2).
IRsend irsend(IR_LED); // (pin, not inverted, and use modulation) Set the GPIO to be used to sending the message.
String readText;unsigned int khz = 38; // 38kHz carrier frequency for infoglobeunsigned char header[] = {0x04}; //0x01: static, 0x04: scrollingunsigned char message[35] = {"Thank you very much Crankyoldgit"};
void handleMessage() {
Serial.println("In handleMessage()");
readText = "This is a test."; //Refer xhttp.open("GET", "setLED?LEDstate="+led, true);
Serial.print("Current Message: ");
Serial.println(readText);
memset(&message[0], 0, sizeof(message));
for (int j = 0; j < readText.length(); ++j) {
message[j] = readText[j];
}
for (int i = 0; i < sizeof(message); ++i) {
if (message[i] == 0x00) {
Serial.println("null char");
}
else {
Serial.println(message[i]);
}
}
sendHexRaw(header, 1, 38); //header at 38kHz
sendHexRaw(message, readText.length(), 38); // Send a raw data capture at 38kHz.
digitalWrite(IR_LED, LOW);
delay(100);
}
void setup(void){
//Serial.begin(115200);
Serial.begin(115200, SERIAL_8N1); // I'm still not sure what arg 2 does here.
readText = "Thank you very much Crankyoldgit";
Serial.println("In setup()");
//Onboard LED port Direction output
pinMode(LED,OUTPUT);
irsend.begin();
handleMessage();
}
// The internet tells me that loop() isn't mandatory to have, but the compiler freaks out when I// remove it, so I'm forced to leave the stub here.void loop(void){}
void sendHexRaw(unsigned char *sigArray, unsigned int sizeArray, unsigned int khz) {
/* HEADER - the byte determines the transition effect When debugging note that first four bits of header should always be '0' 00 - loads message to buffer for transition effect 01 - Static message - blanks without message 02 - Flashing static message 03 - matches static/scroll of previous message 04 - scrolling (blanks without message) 05 - Overwrite portion of existing message 06 - Toggles scrolling when sent without a message MESSAGE - 35 characters max - if sending a message each byte is an ASCII character. characters not supported: % & + ; @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~ see http://hanixdiy.blogspot.com/2010/10/hacking-infoglobe-part-3.html for more details */
uint32_t sigTime = micros();
uint32_t delayTime;
irsend.enableIROut(khz,33);
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sizeArray; i++) { //iterate thru each byte in sigArray
register uint8_t bitMask = 0x80; //starting value of bitmask fo each Hex byte
while (bitMask) { //do 8 times for each bit of the 8 bit byte
sigTime += 1000; //Time 1ms after our last operation (or start)
delayTime = sigTime - micros(); //The difference between current time and 1ms after our last bit
if (bitMask & sigArray[i]) { //its a One bit
irsend.space(delayTime); // LED off for 1000 usec = 1msec
//Serial.print('1'); //for debug - ruins timing but ensures you use the correct bits
}
else { // its a Zero bit
irsend.mark(delayTime);
//Serial.print('0'); //for debug - ruins timing but ensures you use the correct bits
}
bitMask = (unsigned char) bitMask >> 1; // shift mask bit along until it reaches zero > exit the loop
}
}
}
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@kongmunist found the issue! The command was being sent before the InfoGlobe arm had spun up, and thus, the command was ignored. |
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Hello all,
I own an old Olympia Infoglobe and would like to modify it. For those of you who are unaware, the Olympia Infoglobe is an old globe-shaped electronic device that used a cool persistence of vision effect to display the date, time, preprogrammed messages, and, if attached to a phone line, would show caller ID.
The device uses IR to send control signals to the rotating arm of the device. Several people over the years have managed to mod the device to allow for control over the IR signals that are sent, thus allowing custom messages to be displayed.
Although I have experience with coding, I am not a hardware person, and would like some advice on how I would even begin to go about doing this. I don't know if this is the right place to go for answers, but it seems that someone (@greenmikey) has used this project once in the past to mod an Infoglobe, so I figured it would not hurt to start here.
Thanks in advance!
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