Project Part finder

Last modified: 9.12.2020

Started: 1.11.2020

A smart storage system that uses lights to quickly locate electronic components. Search for a part, and the correct drawer illuminates!.

My Part application (GParts) has information about my parts and where to find them. When I search for a specific part and it's located in one of these 138 drawers, the drawer will light up, helping you locate the part faster.

Additionally I can use VoffCon to select other programs to make light patterns, it's totally useless, but fun.

For my addressable light strip projects, I typically use my ledDeviceServerEsp32Pio repository. However, for this project and Part Finder Version II, I created a custom PCB to achieve better results when integrating the electronics into my various projects. This PCB design is available in the long-pcb branch of the same repository.

Why I created it

When I had a new project idea, finding the necessary parts took too much time and often I lost interest in the project when I finally found all the parts. To address this issue, I created a web application called GParts, which I used to store information about the parts and their locations. The application worked well, but I was still spending a significant amount of time searching for my parts because they were stored in various containers scattered around my garage. To improve the situation, I purchased three containers with multiple drawers and placed all my tiny parts in these drawers. However, since all the drawers looked similar, it was still taking a long time to find the parts. Finally, I came up with the idea to light up the drawers and connect them to the GParts application. This solution completely solved my problem, as finding the parts now takes no time at all. I share the GParts application on GitHub for anyone who might find it useful. The Part Finder project is a simple web service running on the ESP32 that can be controlled via GET requests, allowing it to connect to a wide range of devices and systems.

The three containers

Box Description Rows Columns Drawers
1 All drawers are the small 10 6 60
2 Drawers in first 5 rows are small but drawers in last 3 rows are twice the with of small drawers. 8 6 and 3 39
3 Drawers in first 5 rows are small but drawers in last 3 rows are twice the with of small drawers. 8 6 and 3 39
138

Project images

Here are some images of the building progress.

Project Video

What's needed

These are the things I used to create this project. VoffCon is not needed for this project, but using it made things easier while developing.

  • Wood
    • 16mm Plywood board that fits the drawer containers and the power supply.
    • Wood to make the frame, thick enough so the strip never touches the wall when mounted.
    • Wood to create a box around the 200W power supply.

      • 4mm plywood for the housing around the HLK-PM01 and the Esp32.

  • Screws for wood.
  • Glue for wood, to glue together the housing around the HLK-PM01 and the Esp32.
  • Four addressable WS2811, 5 Volts LED strips, each with 50 pixels though only 6 pixels are used on the last one. The strips are all connected together in one long strip making wiring an programming easier.
  • 5 volts power adapter 200 watts to power the strip.
  • Micro controller called Esp32 development board to control the light strip.
  • 5V power adapter (HLK-PM01) to power the micro controller.
  • I used the GParts web application to store information about my parts and configured the app to control the Part finder drawers.
  • [Optional] For testing and fun I used the VoffCon web application.

The code



Device code

The code running on the device is from three files. The program is based on this project at GitHub, but it's been modified a little to add functionality for this project.

Some more information about the the project can be found in the file README.md.


      

      

    



    

    
Code in VoffCon - optional

    
Using VoffCon is optional and there for not needed
      for the Part Finder project.
      If you want to use VoffCon you can use the following VoffCon Card and VoffCon Control
      to select different programs to display colorful patterns on the Part Finder.


    

      
The VoffCon Card

      
This card uses the Control below to control the micro controller on the Part Finder.

      
  

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Javascript class:

      
        //comming soon 
  

      
Html template:

      
        //comming soon 
  

      
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