update
Hi everyone, I’ve been gradually working away designing the programming and test jig for the vb drivers. Done most of the circuit, now on to placement and routing.
I’ve also been looking into smt assembly of the devices and will likely go that path. There’s already interest in over 80 of these, which would mean placing over 1300 parts. Price will still be the same likely.
There will be quite a bit of work getting all the different firmwares up to date. I may do a smaller manufacturing run first and select a few people who have particular devices to help test the firmwares. Would be easier to deal with a few people than everyone trying to get there’s going at once with untested firmwares. There’s a lot of different editions and sub editions to cover. @tehn has kindly offered some assistance in getting the relevant code available in better order.
Since I didn’t really want to share this project until I had everything working, I will periodically share bits of milestones past to keep this thread popping up. I would like to get as many people upgraded in one or two assembly runs as I can.
Here’s a memory from may 2016! My first attempt, where I tried to clock the max7219 at 10MHz and pulse density modulate the leds on and off very fast to get variable brightness. I was doing similar things at work at the time with cheap led panels.
it didn’t work well. The max7219 is just very slow at updating itself internally it seems. I gave up for about a year after this.
