Wedding of the Year
/
Number one daughter got married today. And it was lovely. Everything and everyone involved worked, ran on time, played their part to perfection and made it a properly grand occasion. If you were there (I gave the blog a plug during my "Father of the bride" speech, as you do) then thank you so much for coming. There might have been a few people on the day who were happier than me (I can certainly name two) but there can't have been very many. And so now, along with "number one daughter" and "number one son", I now have "number one son-in-law". Welcome sir.
During my speech I mentioned that on these occasions, along with quite a few others, it is best to make sure that the man makes all the truly important decisions. Number one wife and daughter dealt with all the low level details such as the groom, the venue, the date and the time, the food, the colour scheme etc etc. I was left to wrestle with the really difficult stuff, such as the type and configuration of micro-controller to put in the table decorations and how to make them all remote controlled from my phone. Number one daughter had asked for "some coloured lights in vases". I reckoned I could do a bit better than that.
Above you can see the system in action. The application in my phone is talking to a Bluetooth adapter in one of the lights which is then relaying commands over a 2.4 GHz connection to all the other lights, each of which can be addressed with commands to make it flicker, change colour and do a few other tricks. All the lights and the vases were 3D printed and assembled specially for the occasion. And it all worked splendidly on the day.
I'm going to write up everything and make the code available which essentially gives you two way communication between a phone application and any number of remote network sensors/controls. Making it all work was great fun and a perfect distraction from the proper aspects of the occasion. At least until the enormity of what was going on hit me as they were going through their vows....
