All three sections are wired

Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced sections are wireed and programmed.  We're finializing the artwork for the dibond 8' x 4' signs.  Once they are in house I'll start on the final build!  The end is near.

8 MAX72XX is the limit

I reached the limit on how many MAX7219's can be chained together. That's 8. Good article here, so I'll have to use another 3 outputs on the arduino for my 5th matrix. Photos soon.

External Power

So I did some reading and some internet searching, and think I have at least part of the power issue figured out. I purchased a 7805 +5VDC Voltage Regulator, wired up my 1/2 size breadboard as my external power supply and added an led to that board and to 3 others down the line as a visual to see if power is being routed properly. Now with just the ground from the Arduino going into the circuit I can get everything operating properly. So the next test will be to get a Voltage Regulator with a higher current rating and a heat sink to get up to the current I need to drive all of the leds. 2 internet posts that helped a bunch. *ITP Physical Computing & *http://pixelriot.com/pmatp/node/285

Also http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/psu_5v.html

4 and counting

We're up to 4 8x8 2 color matrixes. Hopefully move to 5 tomorrow. Then it's time to really start focusing on the power supply.

2 New Vids

Ok First we got the Red/Green function working for the 8x8 Matrix.

Secondly, we added a blue row to our LEDs and now show the open/closed/groomed status for 16 trails. I tried to make it a little easier to see the different rows by putting the cardboard on top. Here's a quick guide, Red = Closed, Green = Open, Blue = Groomed. Only one light will illuminate for each trail. Next step would be to do this with a single RGB LED. Also to note what it is doing, I create a quick startup sequence that runs when I reset the Arduino. Then I click 2 buttons I created in the flash program to turn on trails 1-8 & 9-16.