piLED

Overview

piLED is a traffic light based minecraft server notification system using a RaspberryPi. You will need a RaspberryPi running a minecraft server which is connected to the physical hardware described in this guide. The LEDs indicate whether the server is running or not (red), if someone is logged in locally (amber) or if someone is logged in from outside (green). This has been tested on both Spigot and Glowstone implementations of the minecraft sever but should work on any other server type that will work on the RaspberryPi and accepts plugins.

How to use

If you are not interested in playing with the code then just download the latest .jar file from the releases section of the project. After downloading, copy it to your minecraft server plugins folder and follow the hardware guide below.

If you want to play with the source code then download the whole project from the links on the left. It was built in Eclipse using the Maven framework.

Schematic and stripboard

The schematic is shown below. The only reason that R1 and D1 are in a different order is that made the stripboard planning easier

Next up I tested it on breadboard. This was more to test the code than the circuit. Sorry for the messy photo but it's the only one I could find.

The stripboard plan is based on the size of board that would fit in the case so could easily be made smaller.

The top view shows the components and a wonderfully scrappy but functional bit of hot melt keeping the connector from moving.

The bottom shows why soldering was never my day job. Note the cut outs for the screws to prevent shorting and the cut track matching the X on the plan.

Case

I chose a case with a see through top as one of the purposes of this project (aside from fulfilling my penchant for fiddling with electronics and learning how to code again) is to show my children how stuff works. They're too young to start on electronics lessons so as long as they realise that there is physical stuff that needs to be put together (even if it is just 3 resistors and 3 LEDs) as oppose to just buying fully built things or downloading finished stuff then I'm happy.

If you want something more aesthetically pleasing then there are plenty of plain project boxes that would do the job and it may well be possible to squeeze the LEDs into an existing Pi case and avoid the need for any cables. The final picture shows the connections into the pi itself. I've done it this way to avoid exposing the full I/O contacts to curious fingers

Authors and Contributors

I wrote this, it's my first proper code for well over twenty years (Excel macros notwithstanding) and probably the same for electronics that wasn't work related. It's been fun perhaps with the exception of my woeful attempts to understand Git merges!