Starting on Rainbowduino

Using Arduino Microcontrollers
1

Hello, new user here. Microcontrollers have interested me since I was young but I either had no money (when I was young) or school made learning microcontrollers boring (now). But after leaving school for half a year, I think I regained my interest in these and can afford it too. So I'm going to try to build a device for a start. I have some, not too much, experience with the Sparkfun Inventor's Kit when I was in school, mainly input/output, PWM, multithreading and stuff. I think I've forgotten most of them anyway.

I'm going to buy some components, I just want to check with everyone if I'm getting the compatible items. I can only afford to buy them once, as after I get them I'm going to fly off to another country for work (and bring the Rainbowduino along). I'm not sure if I can get more components shipped there.

The end product I'm aiming for would look like this:

So these are what I plan to get:

Rainbowduino LED Driver w/Atmega 328
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rainbowduino-led-driver-platform-atmega-328-p-371.html?cPath=132_133

60mm square 8*8 LED Matrix RGB (Apparently Rainbowduino needs common anode, I think this is right)
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/60mm-square-88-led-matrix-super-bright-rgb-p-113.html?cPath=163_165

9V Battery Holder
http://www.sgbotic.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=869

5x 12mm Push Button

Resistors (from what I see, the Rainbowduino only takes 2 ADC and 1 PD input, so I guess I'll have to have a button array and use the ADC to measure the resistance and see which button is pressed)

Also, I don't think that any soldering is required right? I'm aiming to do less hardware and more programming for this project, so I hope there is no soldering at all.

I really appreciate your help in helping me verify the components. Thank you very much :slight_smile:

2

A potential problem is the Rainbowduino is pretty much geared toward controlling 8x8 LED arrays and has very few (if any) spare pins to allow you to interface things like buttons.

3

Yes I agree, but since this is a starting project I plan to be simple :slight_smile:

From the documentations it seems that it has 2 ADC pins and 1 digital. I plan to use the 2 ADC pins to hook up 2 button arrays (of 2 buttons each) and a single reset button for the 1 digital pin.

At least I know I ordered the right components. :slight_smile:

Thanks.

4

charpi:
Yes I agree, but since this is a starting project I plan to be simple :slight_smile:

From the documentations it seems that it has 2 ADC pins and 1 digital. I plan to use the 2 ADC pins to hook up 2 button arrays (of 2 buttons each) and a single reset button for the 1 digital pin.

At least I know I ordered the right components. :slight_smile:

The link you supplied was for the Rainbowduino v3.0 I think it was the older version that had the ADC6, ADC7 & PD2 pins free. The v3.0 board does break out SDA, SDL, CTS, TX, RX & DTR but I could not find a schematic to determine if these are connected to the atmega chip or some other support chips on the board.