Blinky Flashy
Saturday, January 31st, 2009Well my Christmas 2009 display is well under way. Early this month I got in on the Ren24 PCB and parts COOPS (I did end up going for 4) at my new most favorite web site, DIYC. Once I realized that I was going to be building my own light controllers, I started seeing that I was going to need a few more things like a good soldering iron. I saw some good recommendations on the CSI 2A so I went with that one. It wasn’t long before it arrived. I was eager to try it out, but didn’t have any PCBs or parts that had arrived yet, so I just took some junk resistors and transistors and practiced soldering them to a piece of perfboard I had lying around. The Renard boards all run on PIC chips and everyone says if you are going to run Renards, you need to have a PIC programmer in case you need to re-flash the chips or something. So it wasn’t long before my PicKit2 showed up. I played with it a bit, but soon realized I would need an extension board to prevent having to set up the programming circuit every time I wanted to flash a chip.
I found an extension board on eBay for $7, and it was from a seller that was recommended on DIYC. I received what was supposed to be the extension board a week after ordering it. I opened it only to find that it was not even close to what I ordered. I emailed the seller and he said to send it back and he would send me my board. I questioned that because now I would be paying shipping twice (once for the original purchase, and now again to send the wrong item back to him). He assured me I was confused (I wasn’t), and if need be he would refund me the shipping. I sent the wrong item right back. He didn’t send my correct item until he got that wrong item back (I would have shipped it right away), anyhow, about a week later, I finally got my extension board (I never did get refunded for the shipping, but I haven’t left him feedback either).
I saw an article in the September issue of the DIYC news letter where a member made LED strobes that were controlled from a Grinch, much cheaper than buying curtain strobes and finding a string of C6s just to mutilate for the sockets. I contacted the guy at DIYC (wjohn) who keeps an inventory of the Grinch PCBs and picked up two Grinch boards. I figured while I was at it, I would get the parts to animate the lights at the store as well (hence the 2nd Grinch). I also got 16 SSR boards from him for the store’s display also. I soon realized that I didn’t want to run 16 CAT5 cables around the side of the house just for strobes, so I wanted my grinch mounted outside right near where they would be. However, a parallel connection (what the grinch uses), is only rated for like 20′. So I need to convert my grinch into something else. I looked at the REN-C which basically turns the grinch into a Renard, but ultimately I am looking at running the DMX firmware on my Renards, and there is not DMX firmware for the REN-C. I found where RJ had created a non-dimming Grinch DMX converter, but it was a one time deal, and he wasn’t getting anymore boards made up. Then I found RPMs dimming Grinch DMX converter. Seemed like a bit overkill for what I wanted, but at least it would work.
Not quite, RPMs board is designed with an AVR not a PIC. So that PIC programmer, while it would still prove useful on the Renards, would be useless for this project. I found a cheap AVR programmer kit over at ladyada’s site. I got one of those and it arrived early last week. Ultimately that was the first PCB I got to solder with my new iron. The iron worked great, especially for someone who is used to crappy radio shack irons and solder that isn’t the right blend. I finished the board in about an hour, plugged it in and it worked right away. Since I didn’t have an AVR to test it with, I plugged it into the ICSP plug on my Arduino (which runs off an AVR) and it found it right away. My first PCB board built from the ground up was a success.
In the mean time, I found someone at DLA who had one of RJ’s original boards. He said he would give it to me for nothing as long as I paid the favor forward to some newbie next year. Oh well, I’ll just use RJs for my strobes (on/off only), and use the dimming one at the store.
Late last week the Grinch and SSR boards arrived and Monday my Mouser order arrived with the parts to populate the Grinches, SSRs, Grinch DMX converters and USB DMX Dongle. The dongle coop just ended so the boards should be printed up in the next few weeks and I can get that together, until then I found a way to use my arduino as an USB DMX dongle.
I’m looking to order some super bright LEDs off of eBay, but I’m waiting on my QAM TV tuner cards to sell so I have some funds to buy them with. Oh yeah, I didn’t tell that story on here yet (wow this is going to be a long post, really should update more often, not all at once). I bought three PCI QAM TV tuners to put into my BeyondTV box because Massillon cable was switching to QAM. At the time, the three cards seemed like the cheapest and easiest way to get the same level of use out of the BeyondTV box. They arrived and I screwed around with them for three days. You could watch live TV all you wanted, but recordings only happened about 25% of the time. I got so frustrated that I just decided that was it. The next day I signed up for DirectTV and canceled the cable. Now we have a DirectTV DVR (not quite as good as mine, but at least I don’t have to mess with it anymore), and I’ve been getting rid of the QAM cards on eBay.
Anyhoo, I got my first Grinch soldered up on Tuesday and hooked up a few LEDs I had lying around, made up a parallel cable (good thing this laptop had a parallel port!), plugged it in and lo and behold we have blinky flashy. I would have built up a SSR so I could put real Christmas lights on it, but some resistors are on backorder at Mouser, so I had to settle for the LEDs, but nonetheless I was blinking and flashing LEDs using Vixen. I was using a L7805P voltage regulator that I had from a previous project to provide the 5 volts to the grinch, and I had it on for like half an hour, I happened to brush against the regulator and I thought I touched my soldering iron it was so hot. I immediately unplugged it. Since then I’ve only run it for like a minute at a time. I’m still not immediately sure why it is getting so hot, the chips shouldn’t be pulling that much, but until I get one of the grinch dmx boards built (which have built in power supplies), it will have to do. I’m hoping that putting a heat sink on will temporarily fix the problem.
I guess that’s all for tonight. I’m hoping to get more regular updates out, mainly to keep from having posts that are 1316 words (at last count), but I’ve said that in the past, and well, you know how that goes.