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duckGLOW SAO

SAOs with glowing rubber duckies

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astuder has 2809 orders / 170reviews
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duckGLOW is an SAO with a glowing rubber duck, lit up by an RGB or UV LED, controllable over I2C.

It all started with a small rubber duck that vividly fluoresced under black-light. Then I noticed, that the hole on the bottom, which usually holds a whistle, has the perfect size for a 5mm LED. LEDs are the main ingredient of SAOs, so this project was born and the rubber duckies multiplied.

Electronics

As I can't make up my mind, there are two designs of the PCB: The dramatic duckJAWS, a Jaws-style shark (sea-monster?) nibbling at the tail of the duck. And the more mellow duckBATH, a bubbly bathtub for the duck to float on.

Both PCBs share similar circuits and the same firmware. Both support a common anode RGB LED, or a 2-legged "UV" LED. duckJAWS also features side-lit red LEDs to add an ominous glow to the shark's teeth.

The MCU on the SAO is a CH32V003, and its programming pin is exposed on GPIO1.

The SAO features a 3.3V boost converter. This ensures full LED brightness even when the SAO runs off unregulated batteries (like for example on the 2023 Supercon badge). 3.3V limits the brightness with a UV LED, so I might increase the voltage on a future revision.

Two solder jumpers allow to configure the SAO to four different I2C addresses.

Control

Color and animation parameters can be controlled over I2C. When happy with the reconfigured rubber duck, the settings can be stored as new power-on default via another I2C command.

The documentation for the I2C registers is stored on the SAO and can be read over I2C. There's also an Easter-egg to reward the I2C curious.

In addition to I2C, the SAO also supports the WS2812 protocol on GPIO2, turning the rubber duck into a NeoPixel.

See GitHub for more detailed documentation of the I2C registers, including a few examples.

Assembly

Obviously, manufacturing of a widget with genuine rubber ducks poses a bit of a DFM challenge.

The plan is, to distribute partially assembled duckGLOW SAOs in kit form:

  • 1x diffused LED
  • 1x unadultered rubber duck
  • 1x PCB with pre-assembled SMT parts

To mount the duck to the SAO, first the legs of the LED are bent 90 degree. The LED is then hot-glued to the bottom of the rubber duck. This assembly is then soldered to the SAO.

The prospective duck parent (or conference host) will have to provide solder and (hot-)glue.

  • 1 × Small rubber duck 30-40mm wide, Amazon and AliExpress has many options, not all glow under UV
  • 1 × 5mm LED, diffused 4-legged RGB with common anode, or 2-legged purple "UV"
  • 1 × SAO PCBA with assembled SMT parts, including 2x3 header

  • Sourcing Rubber Duckies

    Adrian Studer10/22/2024 at 04:01 0 comments

    The most important thing I learned with this project is, that not all rubber duckies are created equal.

    The project started with a rubber duck that was gifted to me by an unknown person at Toorcamp. It has a wingspan of 34mm and strongly fluoresce when illuminated by blacklight (UV-A, or long-wave UV).

    As I didn't know the source of my only rubber duck, I trawled AliExpress for similar looking specimen and ordered 50 of them. These turned out to have a wingspan of 37mm, and aren't fluorescing as well as the original. On the upside, the AliExpress ducks are made of thicker plastic and look better than the original when lit up with an RGB LED.

    Still in search of the perfect UV-excited rubber duck, I turned to Amazon. After a deep taxonomical study of  beak colors, eyelashes and head shapes, I ordered 50 more. Well, turns out these have a wing span of 40mm, and their lips are more orange than in the pictures. But at least the Bezos ducks fluoresce almost as good as my OG duck when shoving a UV LED up their hole.

    To my relief, the hole size of all my samples is 5mm, in compliance with DIN (duck industry norm). So I now have 100 rubber duckies awaiting their fate as SAO ornaments.

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Discussions

Marc MERLIN wrote 11/11/2024 at 22:53 point

Thanks for this fun SAO. I wrote code for it and shared a video here: https://github.com/marcmerlin/2024-Supercon-8-Add-On-Badge/blob/main/README.md

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Adrian Studer wrote 11/12/2024 at 04:55 point

It was great meeting you at Supercon!

Thanks for sharing the video. Happy that at least one person was digging into the I2C functionality :)

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Asterios124 wrote 10/24/2024 at 14:21 point

This project is very cool. In Australia, many people would like it because we are surrounded by water, and we also have a lot of sharks. Especially people who sit on the spinline site would like it here link <a href="https://spinlinecasino.com/">https://spinlinecasino.com/</a> because they are very risky and they are not afraid of much. Although the risks they have are associated only with excitement because they are not afraid of the problems of the site because they have practically no

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