Maxim Eyes Panasonic’s GridEye

Touch is the de facto controller. We have touch screens for everything nowadays. But what if you didn’t have to touch anything to control it? With just a wave of a hand, things would move how you want them to. You enter a room, and all the lights turn on. They are too bright; you wave your hands, and the lights dim. Luke Skywalker would be jealous.

Well, this is possible today. Maxim has an evaluation board for the Panasonic GridEye. It uses the 1-wire interface for easy communication. There are also two different design boards available for use with this evaluation board. Maxim has the MAXREFDES130# which is set up for house lighting control with 8 relays on the board. They also have the MAXREFDES132# which is great for other general microcontroller designs.

Using the Maxim board, an Arduino Uno, and the MAXREFDES132#, we created a gesture controller for DC motors. You can watch it in this Another Geek Moment Video.

You can also read about it on our EEwiki.