what can I say "magnifico" What a great range of effects, I cannot think of anything else you might make them do but I am sure you will think of something. I had a look at your links but I must be missing something. Where can the control boards be purchased and where might there be information for connecting the switching controls and associated wiring,
Thanks Pedro. I am sure that it could do a lot more but I have run out of interest at the moment and want to move on to something else. Maybe if others write effects they can be built into a future release ...
Documentation is included with the library in the docs folder as an html file.
Boards are not 'for sale' as such, but it is easy enough to use the SeedStudio files to have some made. It is actually quite cheap (about AUS$15 delivered to Australia) for 10 boards, so if you have not tried doing this before, give it a go. Takes about 2 weeks from order to postman delivering.
you are too humble. I did not realise that you could get boards made so cheaply, so I will definitely order some and "start to a soldering" I have been having a go at a bit of toner transfer PCB making at home, but having some professionally made boards to work with would be great. Keep up the good work,
I did buy one of those larger units on eBay, as I started out wanting to use these 'off the shelf' type - they are pretty cheap. The problem (for me at least) is that the connections do not allow them to be joined up without cables. My design is similar but has connectors on the edges so the modules can be just plugged together.
The SMD units are more like where I would like to be at, but they are too expensive for my budget.
No doubt, but then with the joined units you have the matrix, the IC and then the next matrix. The matrices do not butt up against each other so, unless I am missing something, you can't build a continuous display (ie, matrix next to matrix next to matrix with no gaps).
Edit: for the sake of clarity I am not referring to the SMD units.
The section of the video showing 'Scrolling' has 12 units daisy chained and working together. That's all the boards I have made up to date. At this stage I don't expect to be building up the remaining 8 spare PCB (I had 2 lots of 10 made up), but I can't see any issues arising from having more of the units connected. Any specific reason you see 10 as a limit?
The web site has been updated with an additional PDF file documenting the hardware BoM, component sources, and assembly of the PCB. https://parola.codeplex.com
I have just completed populating eight of your boards and would just like to compliment you on your well written assembly documentation
+1 Buddha points from me 8)
You will not be disappointed Geoff. I only have eight going at the moment but four more would be good. I am currently looking at the code examples to work out how to only use combinations of some of the functions. Great library.
Marco wanted to say thanks again. I've made up 20 of these and the result is lovely, and still plenty bright enough even powered from an Arduino. My intent is to make this into a self-contained display with an ATMega embedded in it. I have a small bug to work out yet - the 16th module from the left (regardless how I shuffle the modules) has several horizontal lines displayed. I'll do some more investigation on that.
Thanks. I also got lines sometimes and what fixed mine was powering down the display (remove the connector) and then back on again, followed by an Arduino reset. To me it seems there is some timing issue on the reset at the start, as it appears to happen more frequently when many modules are used.