Window frame

At the moment

it shows snowfall, on both windows.

The snowflakes vary a bit in size, and they are in the color according to cheerlights.com, which means: anyone on the planet can choose the color. See more at the end of this page.

 

 

 

But normally it is 

An Art Project

The Window has three distinctively different functionalities: the clock/sensor part, the Cheerlight part, and the festivities function.

 

The clock/sensor part

First off: there are two entirely different clock/sensor sections, or clock faces if you will, one depicted in pink, the other in green. They get their data from entirely different sources, and have as good as nothing in common, apart from the time. 

 

Let's concentrate on only the first one, shown in pink in the graphic above,  to explain the functionality. The 2nd one in green will be explained later. Also, at the moment we look only at the right window, as the left one is not always operational.

 

As mentioned, it is a clock. Its "minute hand" runs vertically from bottom to top, and its "hour hand" runs along the bottom of the window.

 

Starting from the left bottom corner up are 60 LEDs symbolising the 60 minutes of the current hour. In the graphic above, it's the section shown in pink.  Every 15th LEDs is marked in a distinct color, representing 15 minute marks. 

 

The minute hand blinks in a certain color (it's the Cheerlight color; you will find more information on what that means near the bottom of this page).

 

The 24 hour section of the clock runs along the bottom, also depicted in pink in the graphic above. The hour hand blinks in the same color as the minute hand. Also these 24 LEDs are segmented in quarters, aka 6-hour segments, by a LED of a distinct color.

 

Now for the sensor part:

 

A sensor, which could be anywhere on the planet,  tells the Window device what it just measured, and this value will then be used to fill the current minute. As an example: high moisture in the bathroom is depicted in purple, low moisture is shown in green.

 

As the minutes pass on, the blinking LED climbs up the window side, leaving behind the maximum value it has been told by the sensor.  Concretely: if the sensor told "my maximum moisture in this last minute was 35%", the LED for the last minute will be left as green. If it were, say, 80%, the color would be purple.

 

After minute 59 the blinking LED jumps back to the bottom, and, as time goes by, the old measures, now above the blinking light, are being overwritten. And the maximum that had been measured during this past hour? That will be depicted in the horizontal stretch  - pink in the graphic:

 

Along the base there are 24 LEDs, one for each hour of the day. Again, the current hour is blinking, and as it moves on, it leaves the maximum of the past hour behind. For example: if the moisture in the last hour was for only one minute 80%, the color will be purple. Had it only been 30% or below during this hour, the LED would be left in a green color. The procedure is similar to the minute mark: after 24h it starts at 1 again, and the old values are being overwritten.

  

Now the 2nd clock face:

 

Above the first 60 minute section follows a 2nd 60-minute stretch, depicting an other sensor value, green in the graphic above. Sadly there aren't enough LEDs along the side for 2 x 60 minutes, so the 2nd "minute hand" goes up and then along the ceiling.  - Also this 2nd clock has a 24h-part along the bottom, working the same way as the first, pink one. This clock will show other colors, because it measures something else, not moisture, but the principle is the same.

 

if only one window is operational, it's the right one. If both windows work, they are mirrored: The right window runs clockwise, the left one counter-clockwise.

 

The Cheerlight part

The remainder of the window frame is reserved for the Cheerlight (see below) stretch, shown in blue in the graphic above. The actual color blinks, it wanders from left to right and then down. 

 

Whenever the cheerlight changes, the next LED is being used. Changes won't be updatef faster than once per minute. if nobody on the whole planet changes the Cheerlight color within a long period of time, the LED wanders on anyways after 15 minutes. So for 1 hour of nobody changing the color, there will be 4 LEDs representing this period of time.

 

I was curious how often people request an other color, that's why I made this visible over time, and not just the whole part in a single big blob of the current Cheerlight color.

 

Festivity function 

During a public holiday the whole window frame will change every other minute to show the flag of the respective country. This alternates with the normal clock/sensor-cheerlight display. One minute normal, one minute flag, repetitively.

 

Only the country flags of either Estonia or Switzerland are shown here. (Switzerland is a bit problematic, since the borders of the real flag are all red, so I chose to show only 2/3 of the real flag, such that we can see the arms of the cross touching the window frame.)

 

Technology

Two things are noteworthy, the Neopixels and the Particle Photon.

 

Neopixels

This is a strip of LEDs which can change color by command. If you google neopixel or WS2812B, or follow this link, you find out more about this component. What it basically does: it receives information over a data line, which tells every single LED what color it should show and in which intensity.

 

Particle Photon

This is a tiny computer, which has several connectors for sensors and/ or for steering something, like the humidity sensor in the Bathroom and the Neopixels in the Window project. For details follow this link.

The cool thing about the Photon is: it can talk to its colleagues. The company who sells these also provides a secure cloud service, over which the Photons can communicate with each other. Over the same cloud service new programs can be loaded into these tiny computers, no matter where they are. All they need is a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet.

 

Cheerlights are a means to switch LEDs all over the planet to the same color. It’s being done via twitter/X. For more details visit https://cheerlights.com 

If you want to switch the color of all cheerlight LEDs on the planet to - say - orange, send a tweet as follows:

#cheerlights orange

or on discord /cheerlights orange

or others.  

Not all colors are possible. Choose one among these:

red green blue cyan magenta yellow white orange pink purple oldlace