Gember Design

Phidgets are boards for sensing and control projects that are managed via a USB connection to a computer. I use the Phidget Interface Kit 0/0/4 for my Christmas light controllers. To control the boards from a Linux workstation, it is necessary to install the Phidgets driver. To allow connectivity to Phidgets from Fedora 12 (or Fedora 10 or 11):

1. Download the Phidget source: http://www.phidgets.com/drivers.php
2. Untar the contents and change to the phidget21 directory.
3. Run make, then sudo make install.
4. Copy the udev configuration file to the appropriate location.

   sudo cp udev/99-phidgets.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

5. Restart udev.

   sudo /etc/init.d/udev-post reload

6. Connect (or unplug and reconnect) the Phidget board to an available USB port.

I typically control the Phidget board using Python. To install the necessary Python modules:

1. Download the Python module source: http://www.phidgets.com/programming_resources.php
2. Unzip the module.
3. Move the Phidgets directory to the standard location for Python modules.

   sudo mv Phidgets/ /usr/lib64/python2.6/

Christmas Lights, Development, Linux fedora 10, fedora 11, fedora 12, phidgets, python

For the third year in a row, I created a “Christmas Extravaganza” in my apartment with Christmas lights synchronized to music. This year included the addition of another light controller, giving me a total of 12 separate channels of lights. The primary new song addition this year was one of my favorites, Sleighride, written by Leroy Anderson and performed by Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops. As usual, the lights received rave reviews from friends and family who visited during the holiday season.

Christmas Lights