Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

Crowdfunding Now: ANAVI Miracle Controller

By Andrew Gregory. Posted

Lights, WiFi, and programmability make a great combination. You can make light shows, display information, change the colour automatically with time to help keep your body in sync with the natural cycle of daylight, and much more. The ANAVI Miracle Controller brings these three things into one board.

It’s based on the ESP8266, and takes power from either 5- or 12-volt jacks. Output comes via any supported three-wire addressable LED (for most people this will mean WS2812B, but some other models are also supported). If you need a little more output, you can add an I2C OLED display, and there’s also space for up to three I2C sensors.

You can program this board via the Arduino IDE (you’ll need a serial-to-USB cable), but out-of-the-box it comes set up to use Home Assistant, so if you have a hub running, you can control the lighting without having to touch the code.

The ANAVI Miracle Controller can control up to two LED strips

The basic board is $25, or you can opt for a more fully featured package such as the Developer Kit which includes a serial cable, two LED strips, a 0.96-inch OLED display, and a selection of three sensors. All this comes in for just $59.

There’s nothing you can do with the ANAVI Miracle Controller that you couldn’t do with a bare microcontroller and a little wiring, but it does package everything up well and makes it a bit easier to plug everything together. Though we haven’t got our hands on one to test, from the looks of things, it should be an attractive option for people who aren’t confident working with microcontrollers, but want to design their own lighting system.

Price: from $25
From: www.crowdsupply.com
Delivery: March 2020

Buyer Beware

When backing a crowdfunding campaign, you are not purchasing a inished product, but supporting a project working on something new. There is a very real chance that the product will never ship and you’ll lose your money. It’s a great way to support projects you like and get some cheap hardware in the process, but if you use it purely as a chance to snag cheap stuff, you may find that you get burned.

From HackSpace magazine store

More articles from HackSpace magazine magazine

See more articles

Subscribe to our newsletter