The Arduinome in Action

As promised, here are a couple of videos showing some of the first times I've used the arduinome.


Arduinome Startup Sequence


Arduinome Nerdscroll Demo


Arduinome SevenUpLive Test

I'll post more videos one I get used to using the interface.

A Fully Functional Arduinome

As I said, here are more details on the completion of my arduinome. As I mentioned before, I only ran into a single issue once I had all of the components assembled. When I first plugged it in after uploading the firmware, all of the lights were lit and the startup sequence ran turning each row off in succession, instead of turning each row on. A quick search on Google brought up this post on PeterMark's blog with the exact same issue. Upon further inspection, I found that I had indeed swapped the IDC headers for the input and output. Swapping the connections resolved the issue and the startup sequence activated as planned.

I've run through the standard test patches using MAX (monometest, vu_spec, boiiing, etc) and everything is running smoothly. I've even been able to play with SevenUpLive,which is the shit.

I've posted a couple of pictures showing some detail on the final setup. First, this thing is BRIGHT. The LED's are rated at 6000 mcd, color and intensity seems to be uniform, and they're a nice deep blue. My camera can't really handle how bright they are, so the picture above is a bit over saturated and looks much lighter blue than the actual unit. The "dot" effect isn't as noticeable in person, either.

For now I have to keep the board raised because the wiring from the breakout board to the buttons is a little short and I don't want to stress any of the connections. Once I figure out the whole enclosure situation I think that the short connections will help manage the wiring situation and keep the insides of the box clean. It's not something that anyone will likely ever see, but it should keep troubleshooting easier should problems arise.

The board as it currently stands. Note the durable Scotch tape assembly.

The final view of the assembled aruduinome.

I'll try to post some videos soon as well as start working on a detailed set of build instructions.

SUCCESS!!!

I've got my arduinome up and running. I only ran into one small issue and it was resolved quickly. More details in a future post!

Assembly Update

Here's a quick update. I wish I was able to post to this in a more timely fashion, but traveling for work 4 days out of the week make it difficult to put together meaningful posts (and actually work on the project).

• I pulled the trigger and soldered all of the LEDs and diodes to the boards. Despite having a fire started, my MacGyver'ed continuity tests show that everything seems to be connected properly.
• I was able to get the boards held together temporarily with normal tape. As long as I'm careful with the assembled board when moving it around, it should hold until I figure out the enclosure situation.
• I've got the rows and columns wired together with solid core wiring. I know that there's a fair bit of talk on the monome forums about using stranded vs. solid core, but these connections will only be subjected to minimal mechanical stress and should hold.
• I ordered ribbon cable and IDC connectors from Curious Inventor. I've got the cabling from the unsped shield to the breakout board put together and now just need to wire the breakout to the actual button board. I've been reluctant to do this until I am absolutely sure I've go the wire ordering correct, but will have to pull the trigger on this to move forward.
• I was able to cut the breakout board off of the shield using a Dremel tool. This was a little nerve wracking as the perforation is fairly close to one of the traces going to the 164, but I was able to get through it with a pretty straight cut.

Sidenote: I'd recommend Curious Inventor to anyone if you find something you need there. They've shipped both of the orders I've made on the same day as the order was submitted and I received them within 2 days (Atlanta to Chicago) using their cheapest shipping option.

Anyway, this weekend I'm hoping I can get some time in to wire the breakout to the button board, upload the firmware, and (hopefully) start her up. I've also got a new multimeter, Panavise Jr vise, and hot air rework/temperature controlled soldering station coming in, so future projects should be easier to put together.

Progress Update

So it's been a few weeks since I've had the chance to update, but progress has been made! Here's what's been going on:

• I determined that sanding the LEDs was definitely the way to go. The light spread was pretty narrow, but they're bright enough (6000 mcd) that enough light bled out to illuminate the sides of the buttons. Given this combination, I just had to sand the top of the LEDs to get rid of the dot effect and provide enough diffusion to saturate the buttons. BTW, sanding 64 LEDs by hand is a bitch, if I build another one of these I'm going to spend time finding LEDs with a very wide spread.
  
• I've completed soldering the LEDs and diodes to the SparkFun boards. I was hesitant to dive into this because 1. I was (and still am somewhat) worried about differences in intensity/color saturation across the LEDs, 2. Am relying on a $20 firestarter soldering iron and have heard all the horror stories about them crapping out or destroying pads.
  
• I put together a guerilla continuity test (still waiting on Amazon for my multimeter) to check the diodes were working properly. Essentially I had an LED and resistor breadboarded and created a circuit (Vcc->switch row n->diode->switch Gnd (col) n->resistor->LED->Gnd) to ensure that I had continuity through all of the diodes.
• I put together a similar test with the LEDs, but just had to put a resistor in the mix and run through each row-column combo to make sure all of the LEDs were working properly.

The end result is that all of the connections on the boards seem to be good and all of the LEDs lit up. Based on the quick run through it looks like the LEDs I have consistent intensity and color saturation, but I won't know for sure until I get it connected and running through the MAX driver. Right now I'm waiting on another order of ribbon cable and IDC connectors to come in from CuriousInventor so I can wire everything up and (hopefully) start running through initial tests using the arduinome firmware.

BTW, a new version of the firmware is out that includes code for reading from the Arduino's analog inputs. The code is pretty brief, but after looking at how they put it together it's a lot better than I would have come up with.