If I had a nickel for each time I noticed a Bluetooth route discovering hardhat, I’d be effectively on my approach to buying a gumball. And that will all be due to a safety researcher that goes by the deal with S0lidStat3, who constructed one for enjoyable and training. This hardhat, known as Dendrite, might look unusual, and it is perhaps an awfully odd platform to put in a Bluetooth machine locator on, however what it lacks in practicality, it greater than makes up for in blinkenlights!
The fundamental premise is fairly easy — Dendrite has a hoop of LEDs encircling it, and it scans throughout itself to search out broadcasting Bluetooth Low Vitality (BLE) units. If a tool is present in a given route, LEDs in that area of the ring are illuminated. S0lidStat3 constructed it to spotlight the safety dangers related to utilizing BLE in emergency response purposes, however it may simply as simply be used to trace down a misplaced dev board serving up an previous web site from someplace in your own home that you simply haven’t seen in years.
Dendrite attracts energy from a USB-C connection to drive a strip of WS2812B RGB LEDs. The lighting patterns are managed by an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, which additionally coordinates the machine’s general operations. 4 ESP32-C3 microcontrollers are used as Bluetooth scanners to find some other units which can be close by. These are positioned on the entrance, again, and left and proper sides of the hat to offer directional info.
S0lidStat3 has made the circuit design and firmware publicly accessible, so be happy to hack away at it by yourself. You may even construct the system right into a considerably much less awkward platform in the event you so select.The total particulars are accessible on GitHub .A Bluetooth direction-finding hardhat (📷: S0lidStat3)
The circuit diagram (📷: S0lidStat3)
