Front of Makers Quilt Board 2
After a lot of unsoldering and resoldering I have the board properly rebuilt. I went from 30 AWG wire to Wire Wrap wire which is much better. When I wired the matrix to the drivers I alternated blue and white wires to better track where I was. Once that was done it was time to verify all the wiring. Out of 48 LED’s I had three bad ones. In the interest of time I went to Radio Shack and paid $1.49 for a pack of 2 3mm LED’s. I still have to slap together some Picaxe code which is 75% done. I should be finished by Sunday.
Old wiring with 30 AWG Wire
New Wiring using WIre Wrap wire
dave 52 Things, The Makers Quilt, hardware 52 Things, LED Matrix, Makers_Quilt
Added a dog collar for a strap and snapped it all together and voila I’ve got a pretty nifty case. See …
Case with the Jacks and the Strap installed
Now on to Project #3. This is going to be a clean up of my Makers Quilt Board #2. I built the board awhile ago but it was a total mess and needed more LED’s to properly display my son’s birthday. I’ve already added more LED’s and another driver. now I have to clean up the wiring. This project is mostly soldering but it’s gotta get done.
dave 52 Things, The Makers Quilt 52 Things, Case Mod, Makers_Quilt
If writing is really the art of re-writing then Hardware Hacking is the art of rebuilding. After looking over the first two boards of the Makers Quilt I’ve decided they need a rehuild. For starters the 26 AWG I used on board is over kill and 30 AWG will work just fine. I also want to redo the LED matrix so the the 9’s and 6’s look better.
Board 1 needs to have the gears removed so I can do something cool with them and the ribbon cable needs to be rerouted through a slot on the board so the edges are clear for connecting other boards.
No design is ever right the first 100 times … that’s why we have solder pullers.
dave Uncategorized Hacking, Makers_Quilt
After finding out the power supply was not regulating properly. The voltage dropped to 4.8 Volts if I had more than 12 LED’s lit. So I re-wrote the code to prevent that from happening. With no LED’s lit the board puts out ~8.05mA With one LED lit the board puts out ~29.2mA. I’m probably going to change the current limiting resistor on the on 6276 to 1.5K. That should drop the Current Draw from the LED’s to around 15mA.
I hooked both boards up to test and one of the LED’s on the first board has blown. With both boards running the power supply had trouble regulating. Proof positive of two things. I have to raise the current limiting resistor on the drivers and I need to get a better power supply before board three gets wired in.
dave The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt
I just found out I can run my Picaxe programmer from a VM. No need to leave my Linux box to program the little buggers. This should all be a moot point when I switch to AVR’s
dave The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt
I swapped out the Picaxe 08M for an 18X. I’ll run some tests this weekend and hopefully have this board done and connected before the next Make NYC meeting.
Halloween prep has also been going slower than I expected. My motivation is just not happening.
I need to set some hard deadlines on some of these projects and honor them. It’s hard when you don’t have to produce results for anyone but yourself.
Second board finished by Friday
Tombstones ready for painting by Saturday
3 LED Spots ready for enclosures by Sunday
There I’ve said it and if anyone is watching you can hold me accountable.
dave Halloween, The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt
Looks like board two will get a different Picaxe. I’ve been running into some odd problems that look like they are related to the code being to long for the device. The Dev tools are not very good about letting me know this. Luckily we’re talking about a few wires so this can be pretty quick.
dave The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt
Finally wired the second board up. I’ve been pretty busy lately so I’m trying to prioritize working on the board. All that’s left is the code.
I was running some code tests and had a timing problem. The bit banging code I used was sending the clock pulse before the data was valid. A 1ms delay fixed that up nicely.
dave The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt
OK quick update on the second board …
32 3mm Red LED’s are soldered in and ready to go.
IC Sockets go in tonight and an interim picture will go up.
dave The Makers Quilt Hacking, Makers_Quilt