Glowing Easter Bunny (eBunny)

1. Introduction

This is just a quick little Easter hack. My wife brought in two cute little glass Easter bunnies lately, and they really demanded for a mod . Well then. The bunnies got a blue LED implanted each, the LEDs where connected to a MSP430G2231 MCU, and the MCU is driven by a small firmware which pulses the LEDs through a PWM. See the result in the blow movie (pure quality, the pink bunny doesn’t look like glowing so much, but it does):

2. Hardware

For the stand alone MSP430G2231 based hardware I used:

The MSP430G2231 I programmed in a Launchpad, then placed it into the target circuit.

3. Schematic

eBunny Schematic

4. Software

You could download the sources from gitihub:

git clone https://github.com/wendlers/msp430-ebunny.git

5. Compilation

This project is written for msp430-gcc on Linux (I used v4.5.3 which is available as package on ubuntu). For flashing the "mspdebug" tool was used (also from the Ubuntu package).

To compile the source just issue a:

make -C src

This builds the firmware in the "src" subdirectory.

6. Flashing

To flash the firmware, place the MCU in your Launchpad and use the "flash" make target:

make -C src flash

Now put the MCU back into your circuit and let the bunnies glow

7. Usage

As soon as the MCU is powered, the bunnies start glowing in paralell. Press the button to make them glow alternate. If the button is pressed again, the bunnies start glowing in paralell again.