Preparations
With my own deadline of the week before Christmas I commenced procuring the important parts for the prototype.
These are the PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit and WS2812B LEDs.
Element14 Australia had the Pioneer Kits in stock and they arrived the next day. Unfortunately Element14 does not stock the WS2812B LEDs just yet so I had to resort to ebay and ordered two sets of LEDs elsewhere.
One set arrived about 2 weeks later and the first set are apparently still in transit some six weeks later.
I even took a punt and bought a set of LEDs locally in Australia but after some experimentation they were found work differently.
These are not a problems that I've ever experienced with Element14.
Rather than waste time waiting for the LEDs I took the opportunity to learn about PSoC Creator and the Pioneer Kit.
Am I repeating myself? - Well, Er.. Yes
Those who have read by blog articles already will guess correctly that I always use the same proven methodology of Crawl, Walk and then Run.
It might not be the fastest method but it works and works well.
I used Internet and the 100 Projects in 100 Days as my learning material.
Rather than just follow the instructions verbatim I made up my own goals and figured out how to accomplish them.
My first goal was to turn on an LED under software control. The second was to blink an LED the inbuilt clock.
There's lots of material out there on the Internet you'll have sort the wheat from chaff and there's plenty of chaff out there.
Cypress have some very good videos so have a look at them.
Programming in Hardware (without any solder).
The attached photos are the results of my Binary to Hexadecimal Display using just the UDB (Universal Digital Blocks).
No software was required. It's child's play!
I designed a PCB, milled and drilled it out, drew up a quick schematic in PSoC Creator 3.0 and voila! Instant working project.
If only it were that easy in the 1970's.
If you want to know more just ask!
(BTW-This new editor is a little buggy! And there's no Save and continue button!)
