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Monthly Dezember 2015
LW12 Protocol and Python Package

For my new flat I wanted controllable RGB LED stripes. Problem is, most of the controllable cheap ones only have IR remotes, so the receiver must be in line of sight of the remote somehow. That has several drawbacks: you cannot install it behind some furniture without the receiver sticking out, and synchronizing across several rooms is hard.

My solution was to pick some of the RGB LED WiFi controllers (LW12). These come with a neat Smartphone-App to control them.

However, I wanted to control them with my own home-automation-system, or my own smartphone-app.

SICK PLS 101-312, Python and Linux

After fiddling around with some ultrasonic sensors for S.A.R.A.H. (my home automation system), I was looking for other options. Thanks to ebay, industrial laserscanners are now an option :)
In this article I will describe how I connected the scanner with a regular PC, got the password, and provide a python-class that is able to communicate with the scanner and produce nice cv-images (and a numpy-array containing the measurements).

I payed 80 bucks for this used SICK laserscanner in the bay: the PLS 101-312.