Raspberry PI Pico and STONE Display Dazzling Light Control System

I. Summary

In production life, LED dazzling light control has countless application scenarios, from large to giant outdoor LED display, small to LED indicator of the mouse, keyboard, and key chain, which can be seen almost everywhere. And Raspberry pi Pico was a new member of the Raspberry Pi open-source hardware family, as soon as it appeared, it brought unstoppable heat, at the end of January 2021, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released heavyweight news, the launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico into the field of microcontrollers. This article is to use microcontroller Raspberry pi Pico and STONE LCD display to develop an RGB dazzling light control solution.

II. The functions achieved

(A) RGB-LED control main interface

The working control selection interface of 3 kinds of RGB LEDs can be jumped to the corresponding interface.

(B) Flowing light control interface

1. red running light.
2. green running light.
3. blue running light.

(C) blinking light control interface

1. 500ms flashing.
2. 1000ms blinking.
3. 1500ms blinking.

(D) The fade light control interface

3 kinds of fading mode.

III. The system principle and composition

(A) System principle

Through the LCD display, the system collects the operator’s instructions and sends them to Raspberry pi Pico through the serial port. Raspberry pi Pico analyzes the instructions and controls the light set through the WS2812B compatible timing control signal.

(B) System Composition

The system mainly consists of an LCD display, Raspberry pi Pico, WS2812Blight bar board, four parts.

IV. Raspberry pi Pico and STONE LCD Display System hardware design

(A) STONE LCD display

1. “RGB LED colorful light control” hardware design

Use STONE LCD display of Beijing STONE Technology co., ltd, the model is STVC070WT-01, with an integrated TFT display and touch controller.

(1) STVC070WT-01 product features

• Controlled by any MCU.
• Displaying pictures/text/curves.
• 65536 color TFT display.
• with/without a touch screen.
• RS232/RS485/TTL UART interface and USB port.
• Wide voltage range.

(2) Interfaces

• Power supply interface.
• DC power supply from 12V 1A power adapter.
• Communication interface
• External communication via RS232 serial port with a baud rate of 115200bps.

(B) WS2812blight bar control board

1. Lightbar control panel

Using a new member of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, Raspberry pi Pico.

Raspberry Pi Pico Microcontroller

The Raspberry Pi Pico is designed around the Foundation’s new chip, the RP2040 microcontroller. The following are its parameters.

Click to see details of the Raspberry Pi Pico: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-pico/

• Dual-core 32-bit ARM Cortex -M0+ processor
• Runs at 48MHz, but can be overclocked to 133MHz
• 30 GPIO pins (26 exposed)
• Can support USB host or device mode
• 8 Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines
• The RP2040 is capable of supporting up to 16MB of off-chip flash memory, though only 4MB in the Raspberry pi Pico.
• three 12-bit ADC pins.
• UART, SPI, IIC functions.

V. System software design

(A) RGB LED dazzling light control main interface

The development process of Raspberry Pi Pico and STONE LCD display

1. creates the project and load the required pictures into the project. raspberry pi pico tutorial
2. Here we make a background picture to display the floor and the upward and downward information through Ico.
3. use the TOOL-2019 controls to create, dynamically associated relationships; the main controls are: “Animated icon”, “Variable icon”;
4. software simulation and compilation to generate executable files.
5. the LCD display is connected to the PC via debugging tools and the executable file is downloaded to the screen.

Here, add the Button function on the interface, set the effect to the next chapter key triggered image, transfer to the corresponding setting interface.

(B) RGB LED running light control

STONE HMI uses controls such as “Variable icon”, “Button Key-value return” and audio properties of the controls in order to realize the function of running light control.

(1) STONE TOOL Box GUI design software

First of all, we make the base map, and make the corresponding action effect map for the button trigger, as shown in the following figure.

Place the “Button Key-value return” control at the corresponding location and set its Button effect property to Figure 11 so that when the touch action occurs, the interface at the location covered by the control will display the content of Figure 11 to achieve the effect of a keypress.

• Red Flow is selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 86 01 00 00.
• Green Flow selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 87 01 00 00.
• Blue Flow selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 88 01 00 00.

(2) Raspberry pi Pico console software design

Receive commands from the LCD display through the serial port, parse and call the WS2812b function to drive the LEDs to perform the corresponding actions.

(C) RGB LED blinking light control

STONE LCD display uses controls such as “Variable icon”, “Button Key-value return” and audio properties of the controls to realize the function of running light control.

(1) STONE ToolBox software design

First of all, we make the base map, and make the corresponding action effect map for the button press, as shown in the following figure.

• 500ms blinking selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 89 01 00 00.
• 1000ms blinking selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 8A 01 00 00.
• 1500ms blinking selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 8B 01 00 00.

(2) Raspberry pi Pico console software design

Receive commands from the LCD display through the serial port, parse and call the WS2812b function to drive the LEDs to perform the corresponding actions.

# The state control of the strip, mode=4-6 is the interval flashing, 500ms 1s 1.5s
# The state control of the strip, mode=4-6 is intermittent flashing, 500ms 1s 1.5s
elif mode == 0x04:
np.fill(5,0,0)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(500)
np.fill(0,0,0)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(500)
elif mode == 0x05:
np.fill(0,5,0)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(1000)
np.fill(0,0,0)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(1000)
elif mode == 0x06:
np.fill(0,0,5)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(1500)
np.fill(0,0,0)
np.show()
time.sleep_ms(1500)

(D) RGB LED fading light control

STONE LCD display uses controls such as “Variable icon”, “Button Key-value return” and the audio properties of the controls in order to realize the function of running light control.

(1) STONE software GUI design

First of all, we make the base map, and make the corresponding action effect map for the button press, as shown in the following figure.

• The 1st fade is selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 8C 01 00 00.
• 2nd fade selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 8D 01 00 00.
• 3rd fade selected command: A5 5A 06 83 00 8E 01 00 00.

(2) Raspberry pi Pico console software design

Receive commands from the LCD display through the serial port, parse and call the WS2812b function to drive the LEDs to perform the corresponding actions.

# The state control of the strip, mode=7-9 is a 3-color color gradient
elif mode == 0x07:
np.set_pixel_line_gradient(0,7,1,1,1,30,10,5)
np.show()
elif mode == 0x08:
np.set_pixel_line_gradient(0,7,1,1,1,5,10,30)
np.show()
elif mode == 0x09:
np.set_pixel_line_gradient(0,7,1,1,1,10,30,5)
np.show()

VI. System operation effect test

The effect of the Raspberry pi Pico and STONE LCD Display Dazzling light control system physical demonstration is shown in the following figure.

VII. Future Outlook

This case is to use Raspberry pi Pico and STONE LCD display to build RGB dazzling light control unit, which can be extended to control 256 lights with 8 pins each to form a 32*64 3-color dot matrix screen.