Fort Collins Connexion FTTH Construction – Part Four

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Glen
Inside this small splice enclosure, a 24 fiber, gel-filled cable is terminated.

A 24-count, gel-filled fiber cable is terminated inside this small splice enclosure. The splice enclosure is then placed inside the underground vault to await connections to drop fibers to people’s homes.

Welcome to part four of  my blog post on the construction and installation of the Fort Collins Connexion municipal broadband fiber network. In part three, we looked at the installation of service at my friend Collin’s house. In part four, we’re returning to my neighborhood and documenting the final construction steps before service goes live on my street.

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Build a DMX FeatherWing to Control Lights with a Feather M0

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Glen
Playing around with the DMX FeatherWing, a Particle Ethernew FeatherWing, an Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto, the official Nanoleaf DMX interface, and a Nanoleaf Aurora tile.

Playing around with the DMX FeatherWing, a Particle Ethernet FeatherWing, an Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto, the official Nanoleaf DMX interface, and a Nanoleaf Aurora tile. The GUI on the iPad tells the Feather M0 which light program to run. The program output is sent via DMX-512 to the Nanoleaf setup.

This project uses an Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto board to control a group of Color Kinetics or other RGB light fixtures using the DMX-512 protocol. We’ll build a DMX-512 interface FeatherWing then connect it to the Feather M0 using a Particle Ethernet FeatherWing. Once the hardware is built and assembled, we’ll write software with a web-based GUI to generate RGB lighting effects and control the attached RGB lights using the DMX protocol. By modifying the software on the Feather M0, different effects can be generated and added to the web-based GUI.

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PoE-Powered RGB LED Floodlight

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Glen
Philip Color Kinetics ColorBurst 4 10 watt RGB LED flood light controlled and powered over the network.

Philip Color Kinetics ColorBurst 4 10 watt RGB LED flood light controlled and powered over the network.

Time for another PoE project! This project uses a Silvertel 802.3at Ag5300 PoE+ module with a built-in isolated 24 V DC/DC converter to power  a 10 W ColorKinetics ColorBurst 4 RGB LED floodlight. The Ethernet cable and light plug into a small power / control board and PoE+ powers the floodlight and Art-Net UDP packets control the light. If this were a real product, the power / control board would be integrated into the fixture and the Ethernet cable would then plug directly into the back of the light.

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Fort Collins Connexion FTTH Construction – Part Three

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Glen
After four years of hard work, hundreds of hours of volunteer time, and taking on and winning against one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world, Colin got his Fort Collins Connexion gigabit fiber service installed today! Congratulations, Colin!

After four years of hard work, hundreds of hours of volunteer time, and taking on and winning against one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world, Colin got his Fort Collins Connexion gigabit fiber service installed today! Congratulations, Colin!

Note: if you missed my first two posts on the Connexion construction process, here are links to part one and part two. Things have been pretty quiet in my neighborhood this past month and a half. The only activity since fiber was pulled in late December has been a few technicians digging around in vaults. In northeast Fort Collins neighborhoods, however, service is going live. Let’s take a closer look at having service installed.

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PoE-Powered VFD Tube Clock

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Glen
The completed and assembled PoE-powered vintage VFD tube clock.

The completed and assembled PoE-powered vintage VFD tube clock.

This is a vintage VFD tube clock that uses Ethernet for both power and data. The power is provided using 802.3at PoE+ and a Molex PD Jack that contains both integrated magnetics and a PoE Type 2 PD controller. The IP stack runs on a Microchip PIC18F67J60 microcontroller that has an integrated Ethernet MAC and PHY. The IP stack includes DHCP, DNS, NTP, and LLDP functionality.

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It’s an Ethernet-Powered Christmas Tree!

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Glen


The lighted tree in the video above gets both the power and data for its RGB LED pixels using a single Ethernet cable. Power for the pixels is supplied from an Ethernet switch using the 802.3at PoE+ standard. Data for the pixels comes from software running on a PC that generates Art-Net packets at 40 Hz. Each Art-Net packet contains the RGB levels for all the pixels on the tree. Let’s take a closer look at the technical details and how this tree came into existence.

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An Enclosure for the Dalibor Farny R|Z568M Nixie Tube

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Glen
The finished project.

The finished project.

In the first post in this series, we designed a socket and driver board for a Dalibor Farny R|Z568M Nixie tube. In the the second post in this series, we designed a power supply and controller board for the Nixie tube. In the third and final post in this series, we’re going to design an enclosure to hold both boards and the Nixie tube.

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A Controller for a Dalibor Farny R|Z568M Nixie Tube

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Glen
power-data-works

The Nixie tube connected to the socket / driver board and the socket / driver board connected to the upside down power / controller board.

The first in this series of posts described building a socket and driver board for a Dalibor Farny R|Z568M Nixie tube and driving the tube using a power supply and Particle Photon from another Nixie project. This post covers building a power supply and controller board that mounts underneath the socket and driver board to power the Nixie tube and control the displayed digits.

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A Socket for a Dalibor Farny R|Z568M Nixie Tube

Posted on November 17, 2019 by Glen

I recently ordered one of Dalibor Farny’s R|Z568M Nixie tubes. I wanted to get the tube powered up and displaying digits so I designed a small circuit board to act as a socket and switch the anode and digit cathodes on and off. This board will connect later to another board containing a 170 volt power supply and a microcontroller via some headers. Read on to find out more about the design of the socket and switch board.

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Reverse Engineering the iColor Flex Protocol

Posted on November 17, 2019 by Glen
Hanging a bunch of iColor Flex LMX string lights on the house for Halloween.

Hanging a bunch of iColor Flex LMX string lights on the house for Halloween. These are quite visible even though it’s still daylight out!

Back in the early 2000’s–at least a decade before there were Neopixels or WS2812b LEDs–Color Kinetics introduced flexible color changing LED string lights. Each string contained fifty RGB color changing nodes. Each node contained an RGB LED and a custom ASIC. The nodes were strung along at either 4″ or 12″ spacing along a three conductor cable. The cable connected back to a power data supply that powered the nodes and translated the light level data from either DMX-512 or Ethernet UDP packets into the proprietary protocol used by the nodes. Today we’re going to reverse engineer that proprietary protocol.

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