SugarAddict 227 Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 So I'm missing parts for one of my boards, but here's the power one which turned out nice... that 0402 was no trouble at all and I was worried! This was me figuring out power for next weeks board. P.S. Don't believe the picture date, I'm too lazy to fix the camera. RobG 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SugarAddict 227 Posted April 16, 2011 Author Share Posted April 16, 2011 And here's the slave boards for next weeks controller/shield project... I did have 1 8x8 to fit it to, but those are the parts I'm waiting for to show up... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 Tell us more about this project. What are your intentions? Are you just using the USB for power? Nice boards by the way. I like the way you made it fit the 8x8 matrix. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SugarAddict 227 Posted April 16, 2011 Author Share Posted April 16, 2011 I'm "attempting" a USB LED sign. Next weeks board is almost a copy of the TUSB3410 Connectivity with MSP430F2274. Designed it to have the launchpad sit on top of it and it plug into a breadboard, so the Launchpad will program the F2274 and almost all of the F2274's pins are broken out to the breadboard headers. Parts and boards to make 3 was pretty much $100. That'll be the controller for the many little 8x8 matrix slaves, might make a nice shield if anyone would want one. I'll post more when I have a built item and start working on code Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mac 67 Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 SugarAddict, How are you feeding the slaves? Serial, SPI, I2C? Also, are you directly driving the matrix columns and rows from 74HC595 ICs? Are you doing anything with leftover '2231 pins? Cheerful regards, Mike Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SugarAddict 227 Posted April 16, 2011 Author Share Posted April 16, 2011 I broke out all the 2231 pins to "maybe" do stuff, but it's improbable. I've not yet completely worked out what I want to do for feeding them but I'm going to try more 595's on the 2274 for chip select and bit bang them data one at a time and then bit bang them all at once with a "update now" type message. For the prototype it's direct feed on the matrix's, since I bread boarded that and it worked fine, I'll probably put resistors on the next set I order as I have found other things I'm not happy with on this design. The custom 595 footprints I made were just slightly hard to solder, so I'm going to extend them out some. The actual vs datasheet pin locations on the 8x8 matrix I have was just slightly off and the board is kinda tight to put on, move them inward just a hair and it should be much better. The 1.27 header pin holes are too small for the 1.27 headers... My mistake for trusting Eagle and not double checking that. I've made 4 of the 9 I ordered on the 8x8 boards, might just test with those and make another order once I figure it all out. I've got a handful of ideas on how to mount each 8x8 slave onto a plastic back end with female headers and wires... or wires with female connectors which are glued into cnc'd holes for the right locations. The things I have yet to solve is the final power requirements and setting that all up so that the final build is powered via a wall wart. Also pondering using an SD card for data to display, but that shouldn't be hard off of the 2274 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mac 67 Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 Hi SugarAddict, Thanks for the explanation. Your boards look nice and I like your modular approach. With the processor on each module doing most of the work, there should be very little processing overhead on the host. Synchronized animation (moving dots between adjacent 8x8 modules) could be a problem though. I know you're concentrating on 8x8 modules but there are some nice surplus 5x7 modules out there. I suspect someone could make a pretty nice display with $12 worth of 2-inch LED1145 modules from BG Micro or other nice 5x7 displays from Futurlec or elsewhere. Have fun. Cheerful regards, Mike Quote Link to post Share on other sites
touch 34 Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 Here's some modules I have: http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=230 They're 8x8 bi-color for less than a dollar each, 3mm only but still very nice and bright. I've yet to make some boards up for these as I've not figured out how I'm going to drive them... I was thinking of using 4 modules for a 32x8 display, with 4 AS1100 LED matrix controller IC's driving the displays, and an on board MSP430 for displaying the time/temp/humidity, etc. The main reason I like the AS1100 so much is that it does multiplexing and current limiting for you, you can also adjust the display brightness in software. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mac 67 Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 Hey Touch, those look like nice displays at a very decent price. You got a link for those AS1100 controllers Sir? Oops, I found it here... Thank you... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Here's some modules I have: http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=230 They're 8x8 bi-color for less than a dollar each, 3mm only but still very nice and bright. I've yet to make some boards up for these as I've not figured out how I'm going to drive them... I was thinking of using 4 modules for a 32x8 display, with 4 AS1100 LED matrix controller IC's driving the displays, and an on board MSP430 for displaying the time/temp/humidity, etc. The main reason I like the AS1100 so much is that it does multiplexing and current limiting for you, you can also adjust the display brightness in software. FYI, Sure Electronics use the Holtek HT1632C chip to drive their LED modules. I wonder if we should put together a post that lists all the various PWM-able LED driver chips? TI, Maxim, AMS, Holtek. Who else could we put on that list? But then we'd have to list all the non-PWM-able LED driver chips too. 74hc595, etc... BTW, here's a link to an article on someone's HT1632-AVR library to drive the HT1632 chip. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SugarAddict 227 Posted April 18, 2011 Author Share Posted April 18, 2011 Thanks for the explanation. Your boards look nice and I like your modular approach. With the processor on each module doing most of the work, there should be very little processing overhead on the host. Synchronized animation (moving dots between adjacent 8x8 modules) could be a problem though. I know you're concentrating on 8x8 modules but there are some nice surplus 5x7 modules out there. I suspect someone could make a pretty nice display with $12 worth of 2-inch LED1145 modules from BG Micro or other nice 5x7 displays from Futurlec or elsewhere. I got the 8x8's from Futurlec, looked around a little bit to see if I could find them elsewhere but did not. I like the square leds as it has the higher light to surface ratio (even if it's only in appearances in some cases). It appeals to my OCD I've got a couple of different ideas for doing the updates. The controller will have all of the info and pass down to the slaves what data they should be displaying and then telling them when to show it. The fun part will be figuring out the timings so that it all appears right. The slaves will mostly just be cycling the matrix and receiving new data, but I'm not sure if the receiving new data will lag the display updates too much. I'm going to try bit banging all 9 at once through 2 74hc595 for SIN and a pin on the 2274 for SCLK, will try a SIN from 2274 connected to all slaves with 2 74hc595's as chip select and shared SCLK again. (if CS=0 ignore SIN&SCLK, else get data) to do one at a time... We'll see how things go. I'll post up the end results in a couple weeks. I've reordered new slave boards as I found an error with the ones I've got so I'll get those next Thursday. (A very stupid mistake which I can't beleive I made and didn't catch.) Fixed some other stuff on the board as well since 3 of the devices on it were customs and I found annoyances with them. Longer pads are nice for soldering vs pads that just fit (I'm now going to extend all pads +1/2 total length from datasheets, lol) I'll build the controller board this Thursday/Friday and post pics of it... that'll be the fun one. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
nebraska 0 Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 What happens when you short a usb port on the front of your computer? My son stuck a paper clip into the USB port on my computer and it appears to have died. Why? ____________________________ yahoo keyword tool ~ overture ~ traffic estimator ~ adwords traffic estimator Quote Link to post Share on other sites
nexusone1984 32 Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 Going to throw this out... One of my thoughts on the modular approach for Dot Matrix. Common Clock from Master to all slave unit. Each slave act as a FIFO (First in/First out), as data from master shifts into slave 1, slave 2 is getting data from slave 1, and so forth. Right there we use 3 pins for I/O on each unit. Clock, data in, data out Maybe use 4 pins and add a control pin.... for Clear all Buffers, invert data displayed, etc. and some other functions. Could use 3 pins, when Clock and data are in one set state for X time, next data is control. Has any one tried PWM through the 595 for dimming the Dot matrix LED's? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mac 67 Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 ... Has any one tried PWM through the 595 for dimming the Dot matrix LED's? Yes, but it was using PICs, not MSP430s. Sorry! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
GeekDoc 226 Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 What happens when you short a usb port on the front of your computer? My son stuck a paper clip into the USB port on my computer and it appears to have died. Why? The computer, or the USB port died? I'm going to guess that the USB port, and any near it, is what died. USB ports have +5v, data, and ground pins. Directly shorting (e.g. with a paperclip) the +5v to ground or a data pin may have fried the USB port chip in the computer. The rear USB ports will probably still work, since they are probably driven off a separate chip. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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