Introduction
Many Sgitheach clocks require some kind of control or front panel that carries devices for the sensing of room conditions and for the user to make simple changes to the clock's operation. This simple front panel has 5 main devices:
- LDR to (crudely) sense room brightness level
- Rotary Encoder to allow clock "faces" to be changes, chime volume to be adjusted etc.
- IR Sensor (and handset) to allow more complex commands to be sent to the clock
- PIR or Radar Sensor1 to check room occupancy
- Four LEDs to report on actions and status.
The front panel card uses an ATMEGA328PB microcontroller that handles all the sensors and LEDs. It is configured and reports values over a TWI bus to the main clock microcontroller. The front panel can be remotely reset using a hardware connection. The front panel also has a serial console interface so the operation can be examined without using the main microcontroller.
About Open Design
One intent of the Front Panel project from the outset was that the hardware would be fully open.
The source code of all the code written by us is all open (there may be elements from third parties that are only available as binaries).
Documentation
For Sale
The TWI Bus Front Panel can be purchased as a bare board as a kit, fully built and fully assembled.
The prices of all these options are here.