IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015 - 103

fiGure 7. Stuffing the goat. (Photo courtesy of Simone Giertz.)

fiGure 9. LEDs replacing the eyes. (Photo
courtesy of Simone Giertz.)

Step 5: inStall Soft
pulSewidth-modulated
library

fiGure 8. The electronics in place inside
the goat. (Photo courtesy of Simone Giertz.)

Sew the goat together where you put
in the electronics. Also, sew a bit around
the eyes if the holes are too big for the
LEDs. Nobody likes saggy eye sockets.
That's just scary in a wrong way.

To be able to fade the LEDs, we will need
to use a soft pulsewidth-modulated
(PWM) library: https://code.google.com/p/
rogue-code/wiki/SoftPWMLibrary
Documentation. This allows you to use
any digital pin on the Bean as analog output. By calling the function Soft PWM Set
Percent (PIN_NUMBER, BRIGHTNESS), we can go from 0 to 100% brightness. If you need help installing libraries to
Arduino, check out this guide at http://
arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries.

fiGure 10. The Light Blue app. (Image
courtesy of Simone Giertz.)

Step 6: upload code
Upload this code to your Bean: https://
github.com/PunchThrough/evilLedGoat. Open the Light Blue app, connect
to the Bean, click options, and choose
Sandbox View. Use the sliders and
checkboxes to control the LEDs (Figure 10). The first slider will set how red
the LED is, the second green, the third
one blue, and the last one sets the goat
in disco mode. Because it's not a party
without a disco goat!

Product Reviews (continued from page 101)
programmed, the iOS device can control the on/off settings, even when it is
not in the vicinity" [1].
Our reviewers found that the alarm
works well, but be careful on the soundlevel settings, as it caused some reviewers to become concerned when they
thought a fire alarm was going off and it
was just the TCL Pulse alarm. One problem noted is that there is not an obvious
raised button to depress to turn off the
alarm; this caused most of the reviewers
to fling the alarm against the wall to
remove the battery cover and batteries to
turn it off. In an odd note, I personally
did not have a problem with the
depressed alarm button, but I am accustomed to using my Apple iPhone as an

alarm and most of the other reviewers
were using traditional wall-plugged
alarms. So, it may be an issue of personal experience with new technology use.
The device also functions as a timer or
reminder system. It uses three AAA batteries. The MSRP is US$39.95. As the product is very new, the lowest that I have seen
it online for is US$34.50. For further information, please visit www.tclpulse.com.
As always, the comments and opinions of this article do not represent the
stance of the IEEE. Feel free to send
comments to xillia@ieee.org.

about the author

for O&S Services (www.ons-services.
com). He is a senior editor of IEEE
Consumer Electronics Magazine and
a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is
the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics standards chair, the IEEE Sensors Cou nci l st a nd a rds cha i r, a
member of the IEEE EMC Board of
Directors, and a senior systems engineer at L-3 Communications.

reference
[1] Amplicom USA. (2015, Apr. 1). Amplifyze
TCL Pulse press release. [Online]. Available:
http://www.amplicomusa.com/news-reviewspress/

William Lumpkins (xillia@ieee.org)
is the vice president of engineering
july 2015

IEEE ConsumEr ElECtronICs magazInE

103

http://https:// https://code.google.com/p/ http://www.github.com/PunchThrough/evilLed http://http:// http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries http://www.ons-services http://www.tclpulse.com http://www.amplicomusa.com/news-reviews

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015