Christmas in Brewster

My pixel boards arrived yesterday! I’m very excited about these babies. I can make them any color I want through DMX, plus at 3 5 channels a piece times 30 pixels, my channel count goes up quite a bit . I also got a few of the power injector boards to make the cabling a bit easier.

Not too much other news on the Blinky Flashy front. My whole family has been sick the last week and a half, and it appears I am getting it too, so I haven’t spent as much quality time with the blinky flashy as I might have hoped. As far as the pixels go, I still have to get parts to populate them, but I can’t do that until I sell a bit more on eBay. I’m determined to not spend much more “out of pocket” money on Blinky Flashy, any further funds will have to come from selling stuff on eBay or something like that.

I started working on a Vixen plugin to control my BetaBrite sign that I dug out of the closet a few weeks ago. I’m hoping to document the process as I go, because there isn’t much info out there about developing plugins, and it is something I can hopefully give back to the community.

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I thought with the success I was having getting things to work lately, I would try running the boards at 115,200 bps. Much to my surprise it worked using the diag code. I tried it with RS232 and with RS485. I then ran production code at that speed, and it seems to work OK. I’ll keep my eyes open for any problems, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed!

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At least on the Ren24s (I Hope). I finished up the last three tonight. If I don’t solder another triac for a while, I wouldn’t be too upset. I set about testing them and immediately started getting framing errors just like last time. I wasn’t real thrilled, but I knew the connections and whatnot worked, so I jumped right in to see if I could find the root of the problem. First I tried all three boards, got the same results on the first two, and on the last one all that happened was the COMM FR light was on, no COMM OK light this time. Apparently if you forget to put the RS485 chips in the sockets (wonder who did that), this is how the board acts. Once I put the chips in… I got the same results as the other two. After some trial and error it appears to have been bad code. I had been using the diag file off of kostyun.com, both in testing the first board and these latest ones. I knew that the version I compiled off the wiki worked at 19200, so I switched to that and it worked perfectly. Somewhere along the line, I thought to change that code to 57600 and recompile it. I reloaded the PIC and still no framing errors… YEA!!! Just for shits and giggles, I took my RS232->RS485 converter out of the loop to see if they would work with plain ole RS232, and THEY DID!!! So it appears that the problem all along was the code off of kostyun.com. I read somewhere that Frank compiled it right off the wiki, but something must be different, because the code I compile certainly works, while that version doesn’t. I ran a MD5 calculator on both files and the hashes are different, so something is definitely different, but who knows what. Just glad to put that issue under my belt.

I still have to put the optos in and test the channels, but everything looks good so far. Think I’d better go to bed!

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Worked some more on the remaining Ren24s tonight. I got as far as getting the triacs in one, and decided I had enough with triacs for tonight, so I’ll work on the other two tomorrow night. Getting pretty close to having them done, probably one or two more nights, then its on to testing and mounting them in the heatsinks and enclosures. As promised I took some pictures of my method for aligning the triacs. Basically it is the same as what was found here, but I am using a couple of metal rules rather than plastic ones. By sandwiching the tabs on the traics between two rulers and taping them together, you can them make sure the entire row is perpendicular to the PCB very easily before soldering away.

I took some time last night to lay out where the various channels would be located and where the controllers would be located. I mocked up our house in Google Sketchup, and I will probably use that mockup in my adjustable preview in Vixen. Sketchup wasn’t too helpful for making a diagram of where the controllers and wire were going to do, so as soon as I find something better to make a diagram in, I will post it here.

My 100 amp outdoor sub panel came in yesterday at the hardware, as soon as I get some time, I will be building a portable stand to mount it and four GFCI circuits on for running the controllers. Each controller will be plugged into its own GFCI outlet that will be on its own 15 amp breaker in the sub panel. It will be plugged into a 50 amp outlet that will be permanently mounted on the outside of the house. I originally thought the sub panel was overkill, but in figuring out the channels and stuff last night, I’m already at 30 amps worth of lights. Granted that is if they are all on at the same time, which they won’t be, but still better safe than sorry. That project probably won’t happen until the summer though.

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I’ve been cruising along on my final 3 Ren24s putting them together in assembly line style. I do one step on all three boards, then move on to the next step. Well tonight I found a flaw with that tactic. I finished up the last of the resistors and moved on to the diodes. I didn’t give a second thought to the fact that the diodes need to go in a certain direction… that is until I was finishing up the last one on the last board. I was just thinking they were just like the resistors and went on my merry way. Once I realized that I wasn’t paying any attention, I went back to see how much fixing I was going to need to do. I had a 50/50 chance of getting them in the correct way, and as it turned out, I only had to fix 4 of the 9, so it could have been worse.

While my soldering skills are getting quite good, apparently my de-soldering skills need some work. I spent the better part of 45 minutes wrestling with those 4 diodes trying to get them out and turned around. Hopefully I didn’t ruin any of them! We’ll find out when I power them up I suppose.

Anyhow, that brings me to the issue with assembly line style. Had I just been doing one whole board at a time, I probably would have been more apt to notice that I was working with diodes rather than resistors and paid more attention to the direction in which I was inserting them.

I’m still moving on with the boards assembly line style, but the lesson was learned to realize the difference between resistors and diodes!

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I had every intention of working on the remaining Ren24s tonight, but a pleasant surprised arrived in the mail today. Let’s rewind a bit. I may or may not have mentioned that I ordered two Grinches. Once was for me to control individual super bright LEDs, directly off the Grinch. The other was to control the lights at the store should I decide to do so. I am hoping to use the LEDs as DIY strobes, that I am planning to put in the hedges out front. The initial issue I was having was that the Grinch is run off the parallel port, and the maximum run on a parallel port is like 25′. So I couldn’t get the grinch out by the hedges, so the only alternative was to run 16 CAT5 cables out to the hedges from the Grinch that would be kept nearby the computer. I didn’t really like this idea either, seemed like a waste of CAT5 and would be unwieldy.

I started researching what my options were to extend the Grinch outside. There appeared to be only two: The RenT/RenC combo or a DMX converter. I thought hard about it and decided to go DMX because ultimately I would like everything to run DMX eventually. I initially found RJ’s DMX converter which was only on/off no dimming. This was perfect for the strobes because they would just be on/off. Turns out RJ had only made a couple of boards and had no plans to make any more. I then found RPMs Grinch Dimmer which I ended up building and it works great, but still seemed overkill for the LED strobe project and it would be perfect for at the store (I would need another DMX dongle, but luckily I ordered two PCBs, just need to get the parts if I go that route). Anyhow, while poking around at DLA, I found someone who had an extra board of RJs original design. He said he would give it to me for the cost of postage if I promised to “pay it forward”. Seemed like a good concept to me. He warned me though that he thought there was a mod that needed to be made to make the board work. I asked RJ and the others and no one seemed to remember the mod. I figured I would give it a go anyhow, so I told him to send the board.

That was a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t heard anything from him, so I figured he got tied up and forgot about it. I didn’t want to bug him because he was basically going to give it to me, and I don’t like to pester about free things. Today the board arrived in the mail. I looked it over and couldn’t see anything glaringly wrong with it, so tonight I populated it (I already had the parts from a previous Mouser order). The only thing I could find that was close to being mod like, was the BOM didn’t include fuse holders or a fuse on it. So I did what any man would do, I said “We don’t need no stinkin fuses”, and I soldered a wire across the fuse pads on the PCB. I hooked it up to my DMX dongle and the grinch with a test SSR, and it worked, first time. I think I’m getting better at this soldering thing!

So now I have the ability to control my strobes, I just need to figure out how I’m going to configure them and wire them. I’m leaning towards putting 4 LEDs in some sort of epoxy, and they would be controlled from 1 CAT5 cable, so I would have 16 strobes, each with 4 individually controlled LEDs within it. We’ll see how that pans out later.

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Well I finally got motivated to start on my remaining Ren24s tonight. I know I said I was going to do it last night, but I spent part of the evening putting the finishing touches on the first one I finished. I put High Voltage stickers on the enclosure and I put channel labels on each of the output cords.

I used my usual method of making labels that I want to last. I print the labels on normal label stock, then I cover them with packing tape, and cut both the label and the tape off the backing, works rather well for labels you want to last, however I’ve never really tried it outdoors, so we’ll see.

I then spent the rest of the evening playing with the one working Ren24. I hooked up a bunch of lights and tried out different variations of my candle code.

Tonight I decided I was going to start on another controller, but then it dawned on me to do it Henry Ford Style… No, not Mrs. Ford’s favorite position, where is your mind. I mean in an assembly line. I’m working on all three of the remaining boards, doing one step at a time on each, then moving on to the next step. Tonight I only got as far as getting the 180R resistors in, but the resistors are some of the more time consuming parts, so the hope is that I can finish the three remaining controllers in the time it took me to do the first one.

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Well it’s not really snowing, but you may have noticed that it is snowing on the site. I was visiting all of the Christmas light sites that were listed at DIYC, and came across Eberly Family Christmas. They’re using the same wordpress theme as me, but they had the snow effect, and it looked really cool with the theme. I took a peek at the source for the page and saw that the snow effect was actually a wordpress plugin called let-it-snow, so I uploaded it, activated it, and voila, it’s snowing.

In display news, since I got my first Ren24 working, I’ve taken the last two nights off from building anything, but am planning on jumping into my 2nd 24 tomorrow night. I’ve mostly been looking at other people’s sites (most of which have very little information, but I found a few goodies) and getting other ideas. I think I have the wife talked into some Sparkle Balls for the two trees in our yard, but I’m not convinced we’ll have enough lights, I’ll put that at the end of my to do list.

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I spent the last two nights getting my first Ren24 mounted in its enclosure. Last night (which was actually Thursday night, since its past midnight, seems to happen a lot lately ), I got all of the cable assemblies stripped and inserted into the enclosure. One thing I need to remember for the next one, is to try and set my knife shorter, as it seems I nicked some of the insulation when removing the outer sheath. I picked up some heavy duty wire ties at the hardware on Thursday in the hopes that they would fit in the channel of the enclosure where the sealing foam used to live. They fit perfectly in there and when well tightened, make a great strain relief. Much better looking than the hose clamp idea I originally had. Probably easier on the cables as well.

I sorted out the cables into the groups that would be attached to the board. As I sorted I used wire ties to hold the groups of wires together, next time though I wouldn’t use wire ties, because I kept cutting them off and moving wires around. Then I got the grounding bar installed in the enclosure. I put GOOP(R) on the back side between the washers and the enclosure, and for good measure I put some on the inside between the grounding bar and the enclosure. Hopefully it won’t leak! I then got the PCB/heat sink installed using more GOOP and the wire nut standoffs I made the day before. It was a little tough getting everything aligned while holding the enclosure and keeping the GOOP from getting on everything, but it worked out. That was the last thing I accomplished on Thurs (well Friday morning about 12:15 ).

Tonight I set about getting the wires trimmed, tinned, and hooked up. I also got them looking pretty with more wire ties. It took most of the evening to get everything hooked up, but it was worth the extra time as I think it looks really good. I then fired the board up to test it out. Everything worked fine except channel 17. I wiggled the wire where it connects to the PCB and it seemed tight, but when I looked back down channel 17 was on. I wiggled it some more and couldn’t get it to go off, so I’m not sure what the problem is. I am hoping it isn’t anything that would require me to remove the board like the triac or a bad joint, but as much as a pain that would be, luckily I designed it so that I can remove it without toomuch pain.

I should also mention why I chose the 3 prong plugs instead of the 2 prong ones most people use. When I brought up that I was using them on the forums, some people seemed to be having a hard time understanding why I was using them, and ultimately since it’s Do It Yourself, Not Do It Someone Else’s Way, my way is right for me and that’s all that matters, but here’s my reasons anyhow:

1. They look way better than brown indoor extension cords.
2. The cost was less than the brown indoor extension cords that I was finding ($.97 for brown indoor cords at Lowes, and like $.83 for these at iofast.com), although with shipping, it probably evened out.
3. Most importantly, I have a ton of heavy duty, three prong extension cords from my static display, and I wanted to be able to use them without using 3 prong adapters all the time.

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I got a little bit closer tonight to getting the first Ren24 mounted in its enclosure. This afternoon I drilled the mounting holes in the heat sink for the PCB and I drilled the holes for mounting the heat sink to the enclosure. This evening I put the heat sink in its enclosure and determined that a roll of blue painters’ tape and two rolls of colored electrical tape make perfect spacers for placing the heat sink in the enclosure. So I drilled the holes in the enclosure. I know, you’re saying “gasp… he perforated the enclosure.” Well I purchased some “household” GOOP(r) while on my [now] daily trip to the hardware. I’m hoping to countersink a washer on the back of the enclosure and just before the bolt is inserted all the way, put some Goop around it and hopefully it will make a good seal.

I decided to use the “wire nuts as stand offs” trick that I found on DIYC. I drilled out the metal portion of the wire nut, and then put a hole straight through it. After putting #8 x 1 1/2″ screws through the enclosure, I slid a wire nut and a washer over it and then put on the heat sink. Once tightened down, it was very solid, so I was quite pleased.

Before mounting the PCB, I wanted to try and clean the flux off one more time. I haven’t had great luck using just 70% alcohol, so I tried the alcohol one more time, and then followed it with distilled water. I then blotted the board dry. This combo worked a bit better, but it isn’t as clean as I would like. I think it will do however. I wanted to test the board before mounting it, so I let it dry a bit and plugged it in. 3 channels were acting flaky, but once I rubbed the joints a bit they were fine. I think there was still some moisture in the joints of the triacs and they were shorting out a little. I then set to work mounting the PCB to the heat sink. I used my poly tubing spacers to mount the board. It seems that they were a touch short at 6mm as the board was pulled in to the heat sink by about 1mm when I tightened the screws. Once I got all of the triacs screwed to the heat sink, it looked pretty cool. A bit of relief came over me once it was mounted in the heat sink as it doesn’t feel quite so fragile when I move it around. I powered it up and gave it a quick test and everything seems to be working fine.

I need to get some more screws, nuts and washers so I can get it all mounted in the enclosure, hopefully tomorrow night I can get the screws glued in and the 24 power cords stripped. I would like to get the power wires grouped up and wire tied tomorrow night also, but we’ll see what I get accomplished.

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