That’s 1000 WS2811, IP68 LED’s with about 9cm spacing in strings of 50.
Or, roughly enough to cover a 4 meter by 1.5 meter area.
I’ll need maybe 6 of them to cover the house frontage
50mA per LED…6000 LED’s…that’s gonna be 300 Amps at 5V. Sounds a lot but that’s maybe 3KW , fine from a domestic plug here in Blighty.
The plan. A house sized, low resolution TV
Some minor changes to this PCB
Balls – The PCB flexed waay too much to make a decent contact
Continue reading “Super LED Blinkenator 2000 – Beta 9 incoming”
Doesn’t look like much. BUT
They’re all now working! I just need to tweak only 10 keys settings to significantly alter the entire keyboard – those 10 parent keys are copied through the rows
And I can now also alter all keyswitch holes simultaneously by changing two parameters.
Next step, latching mechanism in the holes (a small, sticky outy lump) and then figuring out how to print it!
JLCPCB have a fairly nice facebook group , and along with their EASYEDA group have done quite a bit to really get hobbyists producing PCB’s
Recently they reached out to me, having read through a lot of the waffle on these here pages and offered a small gesture of thanks for giving them a mention in the past, and, right now also.
so, in return, i’ll write even more about them 🙂 and, how I discovered them!
Back a couple of years ago, when wanting to make my first PCB for couple of decades, I tried KICAD, EAGLE, and a few other ‘free’ software packages. nothing was quite as easy as PROTEUS and , back then , LISA that I used in the mid 90’s in University. I’d resigned myself to a fairly intimidating hill to climb to get back into things…..
Then I found EASYEDA !. I knocked out my first ever PCB – the SpeccyPi, i’ll find it and post about it at some point.
EASYEDA seems to be a tool developed by both JLCPCB and LCSC to help people to purchase their products. i.e. both websites are quite well tied in for a simple ‘design, click, order’ solution. For us hobbyists, it really is a combination of ‘dream come true’ enablers.
Haven’t looked back since. I’m still using EASYEDA, because, like me, it’s quite simple and really works well.
JLCPCB have made almost all of my hobby PCB’s, have done a fantastic job with SMT assembly on my later PCB’s – with their partner site – LCSC , they offer an unmatched value for someone who’s a bit lazy and just wants a ‘1 click’ solution to ordering SMT populated PCB’s.
Really, if you are still using breadboard for your ‘production’ hackery, fire up EASYEDA quickly, bung a few components in, wait a week or two and marvel at your professionally looking PCB inside your widget. it’s shockingly addictive.
if you’re even slightly intimidated by SMT stuff – Fire up the JLCPCB website
do a quick search for resistor
select library type, basic
https://jlcpcb.com/parts/componentSearch?searchTxt=resistor
and see what’s avaialable!
That’s enough gushing!, give them a go!
I’m using them for my C64 mini keyboard kit, the Super LED Blinkenator 2000 and the Djordie’s joystick upgradenator!.
It’s going to be a while yet, but I’ve finally fixed some long standing issues with the keyboard model i’ve been building in Fusion360
The main issue was a badly created model!. I’ve junked quite a lot and started back prior to when some odd dependencies crept in and really put some roadblocks on scaling things correctly and adding finishing touches.
But, it’s been worth it
That previous picture is the underside of the Keyboard – Those holes in the keys are 2.2 x 2.8 holes. it’s a first run at fitting the key switches into the keycaps. a lot more iteration needed to hollow it out a little and create some form of inbuilt snap-fit with stress relief, but…it’s a start!
The silver / grey keys over on the left are the ‘parent’ keys
If I make an update to the curves or size of a parent key – it rolls out to all the same sized keys in its row
if I need to iterate the hole size for the key switches, I simply change a few parameters for the hole size and it rolls out to all the keys in one go.
I’ve taken so long to develop it parametrically as it’ll now be so much quicker to iterate
and, here’s a new render!……..going to spend the next few weeks iterating, and hopefully over Christmas , fire up the resin 3D printer for the first time!
Just realised that it’s not easy to find an image to show what’s in a kit.
Here goes
what you need to add;
What’s In the Kit
C64 Mini not included, but this is what yours will look like once you’ve assembled the kit
Coming at some point in the future (late 2021 at this rate) – 3D, resin printed Keycaps!
Back a few years ago, I ventured into making my first PCB in over 2 decades. it was motherboard to hold a raspberry pi zero, and fit within a zx spectrum case.
it was inspired a little by an article in MAGPI magazine by a Mr P J evans.
I did kind of goof it up a bit, so relegated that to the ‘ideas to do in the future’ drawer
Whilst perusing Kickstarter today, I found this –
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hermitretro/hermit-retro-zx-spectrum-board?ref=thanks-copy
A custom board for original and reproduction ZX Spectrum cases powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero and the Fuse emulator
So I backed it!
Have a look 🙂
it’s a far more elegant solution than I came up with.
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