How to Remote Control a Thing

 

When programming the Trinket, it also gets power from the laptop - so a diode is used between the Development Board and the Trinket to prevent current flowing the wrong way.

 

The green PCB terminal blocks are used to make life easier. The positive wire from a LiPo battery is connected in the 3V7 hole, ground in the GND hole. P0 and P1 can be used as the inputs to two Thingatrons and therefore two "things" can be controlled. The Thingatrons also need to be connected to the Ground PCB pin. The Trinket can control more outputs - this example just uses two - the yellow and the blue wires. It could also respond to more inputs - but just the one (white wire) is used in this example.

 

 

The Trinket is a little different from programming other Arduino-style microprocessors - especially the bootloader. Please refer to https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-trinket/introduction - take note that some computers' USB v3 ports don't recognize the Trinket's bootloader. So use a USB v2 port or a USB hub in between. Also, The Trinket does not appear in the serial ports drop-down - you program it using the USBTinyISP setting.

 

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// react to digital input
// by Andy Stanford-Clark with embellishments by Lucy Rogers

// when INPUT goes high, pulse both OUTPUT0 and Output1 high for 30 sec

#define INPUTA 2
#define Output0 0
#define Output1 1

void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:

//pinMode(INPUT, INPUT);
pinMode(INPUTA, INPUT);
pinMode(Output0, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Output1, OUTPUT);

}

void loop() {

if (digitalRead(INPUTA)) {
digitalWrite(Output0, LOW);
digitalWrite(Output1, LOW);
delay(0.5*1000);
digitalWrite(Output0, HIGH);
digitalWrite(Output1, HIGH);
delay(30*1000);
digitalWrite(Output0, LOW);
digitalWrite(Output1, LOW);
delay(20*1000);
}

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You can change the time period the Things will be on for by changing the "delay(30*1000)".

The initial "delay(0.5*1000)" is to make sure the Thing is off at the beginning.

 

At the end, the "delay(20*1000)" is to ensure there is a 20-second gap before the Things are re-triggered.

 

Once the Breadboard version was working I soldered the whole thing on to veroboard - which has made a robust system which I could insert into any project - such as a Banksy Shredder Frame or a Dragon that breathes smoke (see articles below!).