Compulab fit-statUSB USB LED Light

Ordered one of these since I always thought it is a good idea to use an RGB LED as a status signaling device for small headless units. This will be connected to my fitlet2 running headless. Just received it today and so far I have only had time to plug it into my Mac and surprise, surprise it came up as serial port. Based on the USB Vendor ID the MCU is a TI MSP430 system. I have not been gutsy enough to see if I can get to small plastic housing off the PCB to look at the chip. The MCU provides a simplistic serial command line interface. Type "H" to get help. The implementation seems to automatically detect the serial speed - I could connect at 9600 and 115200. Here is what the help looks like: ******************************************************* P - Enter Device firmware update mode ? - Return device UUID # #RRGGBB - Set LED color according to Hex color code F - Set Fade transition Time in ms 'F1000' G - Return current color, (rr,gg,bb) B - Set Fade transition Colors B#RRGGBB-tttt#RRGGBB.... Fade transition after each color Firmware Revision: V0.9.5 ******************************************************* I removed some extra line feeds to condense it. The MCU supports automatic fading from one color to another color in a user-specified transition time. This product is very similar to a blink(1) or blinkstick at a much better price point. On the downside, software support does not yet seem to exist. The fit-iot website does not really provide any extra details. Overall, I really like this product. It provides a decent price point and is very low profile. Waiting for some software support. Or maybe I will try to add support for it in the Python modules supporting one of the other libraries. Will be ordering a 2nd unit for my headless Atom server. Highly recommended to developers and makers. Not for people who are looking for a plug and play product.

I threw this together in the startup of my Raspberry Pi. It reads the system boot log to determine what /dev/tty port the unit has been assigned, saves that information in a small config file that can be referenced later by other scripts, and initializes the serial port. (Beware of any line-wrap/indentation issues that this web page my introduce.) ====================================================== #!/usr/bin/ksh USB_NUM=$(dmesg | grep "Product: fit_StatUSB" | cut -f1 -d":" | awk '{ print $NF }') if [ "${USB_NUM}" = "" ] then print "/dev/null" > /etc/fit_StatUSB.conf print "fit_StatUSB NOT DETECTED" exit fi ACM_PORT=$(dmesg | grep "cdc_acm ${USB_NUM}" | cut -f3 -d":" | awk '{ print $NF }' | cut -f1 -d":") print "/dev/${ACM_PORT}" > /etc/fit_StatUSB.conf # Initialize serial port baud rate stty -F /dev/${ACM_PORT} 115200 raw -echo -echoe -echok -echoctl -echoke # Set transition time to shortest possible time echo "F0001" > /dev/${ACM_PORT} # Turn on full bright white for 1 second # and then turn it off echo "#FFFFFF" > /dev/${ACM_PORT} sleep 1 echo "#000000" > /dev/${ACM_PORT} print "fit_StatUSB initialized: /dev/${ACM_PORT}" ====================================================== In other scripts I then can just reference my "/etc/fit_StatUSB.conf" file to learn the device node, and write the colors as needed. A great little gizmo, if you know how to code or script.

This is an excellent little device. Easier and almost as cheap as trying to build your own, ok maybe not quite as cheap but this thing is sweet. I'm using them with Raspberry Pis in a cluster and use Ansible to switch the colors based on different things like to identify which device is currently being configured by Ansible and then whether things were successful or not. Helps maintain a visual status of things for playing and testing. I could also see these being useful for various demos.

I have 10 of these on 10 linux systems, and I can't get them to reliable function.

This little thing is great for building your own visual notifications. I plug it into a USB gooseneck so I can insure visibility. It is versatile as your imagination to build various notifications from the command line.

Pros: Emulates a serial port so most endpoint software doesnt stop it Simple to use Small, doesnt really take up space Very bright Cons: Color code not quite accurate Python library has some bugs I am very happy with the Compulab fit-statUSB. I purchased it to use as part of a pet project to display my Microsoft Teams status. With python, I was able to quickly produce a couple of solutions, one relying on a long USB extender cable and another sending a signal over bluetooth to a raspberry pi. The only drawback that I found with this is that the LED colors dont quite match their hex code, causing some of the colors to not display properly. In order to account for this, one would need to use a slightly dimmer color code. Overall, I think this USB LED has great potential for quick DIY projects.

This is an excellent system okay indicator. I use it to blink green or red with a simple command script. Nice and bright. It works great on my Raspberry PI 400 and Dell Windows 10 laptop. It turns off after 24-hours on a Dell rack server running Ubuntu 16.04. I have tried multiple USB troubleshooting tricks, but this is still unreliable on Ubuntu.