Putting music signal into the Analog Input of an Arduino can be pretty boring. That is, unless you use a totally awesome chip like the MSGEQ7. This simple Spectrum Analyzer driven with an Arduino only takes a handful of parts. I used these incredibly awesome protoboards from Adafruit for the first time. The protoboard alone gives a fit and finish even before it starts!
Perma-Proto (Image at Adafruit.com)
Can’t decide which Arduino Board is for you? Have a board you want others to know about? This Google Docs Spreadsheet compares some of the key attributes of various Arduino boards. Whether you are trying to decide which one to buy or just want to know the differences, this chart can help.
The control board is up and running, with some re-work. Shown next to the working LEDs is my original inspiration. Last Christmas my brother gave me the ThinkGeek Binary watch. Since then I’ve been fascinated with binary clocks. Finally I had an idea that can help with other projects. (Read the rest of this entry…)
Assembled control board. The processor is an ATmega328, RTC is DS1307 RTC, and LED driver is a TLC5904. There is also a FT232RL on the back side for USB to Serial connection, however, it doesn’t appear to be working.Next I’ll need to turn on the RTC and make sure it can actually keep time.
This is a quick video demonstrating the LED Matrix Shield for the Arduino. This Matrix is an 8×6 “Normal” matrix. (It is not Chairleplexed.) Blue LEDs were used to give it a brilliant hue and to provide another source of light in dimly lit apartment homes. Only one row of the Matrix is lit up at one time. This is done to save power and because the ATMega processor of the Arduino cannot source or sink more than 200mA of current.
More details on the Matrix, Software, and PCB hardware will be posted shortly.
The scrolling message can be any string of characters between ASCII 32 and 255. The font is a 8×6 font based on 5×7 characters. Click below to see a picture of the Shield sitting on top of an Arduino.
The PCB for my very first Arduino shield arrived today from BatchPCB. At first glance everything looks good. The silkscreen with my name and web address didn’t come out so well but that was probably my fault on trying to fit in too much.
Looking forward to assembling then with some Blue LEDs!
TLC5940NT Painter Board
This screen shot is an all-layer view of my TLC5940 painter board. The 1st draft featured two TLC5940s, but I decided it made the board too large. Instead, I wanted the ability to mount the painter boards around the LED’s shadow box. This should make routing all the wires much easier.
This pattern is called Row Your Boat. As one of the strips starts to get brighter, a nearby strip will join in the fading. After completing a fade cycle, they start switching colors. There is a random strobe thrown in there as well. The first 10 seconds are with a diffuser (piece of paper), the last 10 seconds are without. The final panel will use a diffuser.
Quick schematic in gschem running on OS X.
In an attempt to find a free set of schematic and PCB tools for hobby work, I looked back at gEDA. The last time I used it was when the project first started, years and years ago. I was happy to see that OS X had a set of fink packages for the gEDA suite. After figuring out how to get X11 in Leopard (since I didn’t include it when I installed 10.5) and install fink, getting gEDA going was a snap. The user jluciani in the Arduino forums has provided some free pcb footprints he has used from previous projects.
Initially I tried to get a LCD screen working with my Illuminato based Arduino. After a couple of attempts I realized two things: 1. The Iluminato is not ready for prime time. and 2. I burned out the LCD. So I decided to move on to the LCD strips I have from Sparkfun.
