Glow Worm

Overview

WIP: This Is Currently In Development!

The goal of this project is to create a simple interface for a roboRIO to drive a string of WS2812 LEDs.

The RP2040 will accept commands from the RIO, and from there turn on a pre-configured set of LEDs.

graph TD;
    rio[roboRIO]
    rp[RP2040]
    vrm[VRM]
    led[WS2812B]
    
    rio-- UART -->rp
    vrm-- 5V -->rp
    vrm-- 5V -->led
    rp-- PWM -->led

Loading

Build

• Install and setup pico-sdk
• Set the PICO_SDK_PATH to match, see pico-sdk repo above
• Create a build folder, run cmake, then run make

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ../
$ make

In the future, you can skip ahead to the make command when you have code changes.

Afterward, within the build/src folder, use the .uf2 file for programming

Programming The RP2040

• Hold the BOOTSEL button on the off RP2040
• Plug the RP2040 in to the computer via USB while holding BOOTSEL
• Release BOOTSEL
• After a moment, it will show up as a storage device.
• Copy the .uf2 file to the storage device

The RP2040 will reboot, starting code

TODO

• Verify 3.3v is enough to reach a logical high for WS2812
• Create control interface between RP2040 and RIO
• Create a list of patterns for the RP2040 to output

Credits

Thanks to MrYsLab's NeoPixelConnect library, which has been copied here with minor modifications to make it non-specific to Arduino.