Build process begins

Yesterday I completed building all of the rear portions of the signs.  Today I've marked all of the drill locations for the fronts and hopefully will head over to carpentry to use the drill press later today or tomorrow.

Design for LED Housing

Here is a quick sketch of how each sign will be built. The back part (smaller) will be mounted to the sign. I will mount the LED boards to the front section, then slide it over the smaller once and secure them togther. When finished we will have 6 different sized housing from 6 LEDs to 1 LED. Placing an order with TAP Plastics today

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.

Cutting the cord

Well one of them. We're now offcially wireless. I got 2 xbees talking to each other and was able to move my 2 matrixes across the room. This article here helped a lot with setting up the xbees. Next step will be power. Preferably we'd run on solar power (I can get one matrix running & xbee if I plug straight into the solar panel) still working on wiring up the battery and running off of that.

Of note I didn't have to change my arduino code at all, just plugged one xbee straight into the iobridge, GND->GND, 5V->5V, Rx->Tx & Tx ->Rx. The other xbee went to the arduino, 3.3v ->3v, GND->GND, Rx ->Tx & Tx ->Rx. Simple as that. Photos shortly, gotta charge my camera.

Really Web Connected

So last week while searching for information on solar power I came across this post. Not only did this cover XBee wireless and some solar but it sparked my interest in the ioBridge.

My shiny new ioBridge came in yesterday and quickly it was connected to the internet and my arduino matrix setup. With a little change to my arduino code, adding a few simple if statements to decide what to show on the screens based on the serial input, I was able to type X, O, or G into a web page I created (with help from this post and this post) and instantly display it on my matrixes.

The next step would be to write a script that sent this information everytime the Snow Report system was updated.