HillmanImp that's cool to do it without the library. Regarding splitting the time into fifths, I am very hung up on having every single number shown. However I think your method might look aesthetcally cleaner if skipping numbers is OK.
I have had a frustrating couple of weeks trying to attach the TM1637 board to the 0.8" LED but I finally got a good approach and I made a couple this morning that are very compact and appear to be sturdy. The procedure is roughly:
- Cut the 0.56" LED pins with dremel
- use soldering iron to melt remaining solder on board, then use solder sucker to pull out the remaining pin piece and solder
- Bend 0.8" LED pins against their body towards the middle, and then out at 90 degrees. (This will align them with the holes of the TM1637 board which is designed for the 0.56" digit height LED units)
- Solder the 0.8" pins into the TM1637 board holes.
Here is the finished product:
Of course it's simple but it took a bunch of time and other tests with things like headers and connectors and whatnot.
Two things I am now working on:
- Figuring out how to get this all into the enclosure. I will likely use perfboard, per suggestion above, and some wire when I get it in the mail this week. Although I might be able to squeeze a 2xAA and 1xAA battery case in there, I will likely leave the batteries on a long wire outside of the box, just for ease of changing them as needed.
- I am thinking about how to "send" the GPS speed to another Arduino to use as an input. It sounds like two possible ways are: SoftwareSerial, or Digital Output to Analog Input. Given the issues with SoftwareSerial in this thread, I might try the latter method. Additionally, my receiving Arduino already reads from an analog pin that a potentiometer is sending to... so if I can have this GPS value sent as an analog number, I might not even need any code changes in the receiving Arduino.
Anyways thanks as always for the help and if you have any tips on the above, I'd love to hear.
