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  • Author Author: colporteur
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Fireworks Simulation with Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) Day 3

colporteur

With an extra pair of hands working on the display panel  today's efforts were focused on electronics.

 

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Simple setup. Wire RGBLED OFC to limiting resistors and then connect limiting resistors to controller GPIO's. Wire a button and wire an output to trigger the LED sequence strip.

 

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In my last blog post I alluded to a solution for wiring the RGBLED OFC's. The four leads of the RGBLED connect perfectly in a 2.54mm Dupont Cable Jumper Wire Pin Header Housing female Connector. Four wires from a flat cable with the connector attached provides a flexible connection option to the limiting resistors. Mounted the limiting resistors on a slice of perfboard and solder the ends of the flat cable to the resistor provides a means for the RGBLED OFC to be tested.

 

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A quick stop over to the guy that is assembling the display panel gets me thinking about a design decision to limit the RGBLED OFC GPIO's. A rummage under the bench to find a Geekcredit Mega micocontroller. Another off the shelf project. The mega has over 50 GPIO's, more than enough to support all the RGBLED's. Forget about it! You have already started laying out the python code to use a Pi.

 

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I throw a few terminal blocks on the perfboard to accommodate the button and LED strip trigger and then switch gears to address the nagging controller Pi verses Arduino thoughts.

 

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Truth be told coding is not a strong skill. I struggle every time I code. It seems I don't retain past knowledge and it feels like I'm starting over every time I sit to write. For that reason I have been leaning towards the Pi. I have some Python code I can reuse and maybe lighten the burden. Yeah, but it limits the colour range on some of the burst rings. The Pi has some additional overhead. An Arduino solution sure would make thing easier. The punch clock rings and its time to call it a day.

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The display panel is being assembled. The connection assemble for the LED's and other resources is ready. Do a review on the next sitting and see what other electronics I need to consider.

  • in reply to DAB

    Thanks for the comments.

     

    I'm focused on the code at the moment because it something I don't have confidence to control. I have bumped into a few other things in the project that have generated challenges and have required some problem solving thinking to resolve. I have a first draft of some Arduino code but it errors out. I patterned it after the working Python I wrote first, meaning the code has the same flow. I have a few ideas for fix I would like to try before using any life lines to resolve.

     

    I've struggle with code through my careers. Simply because it never became easy. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stick. I know what conditional statement is, how it works and its applications. Ask me to write such a statement in any of the ten programming languages I have fallen into, my response would be, "I know what to look for and I can find it, I just can't generate it." I coded a whole abuse management system deployed for identifying abuse within an ISP network. It detected, identified, mitigated and managed the abuse process. The code design was modular which made it flexible. People years later would ask me questions about the design and how easy it was to change. I invested a good year in getting that system into production. I couldn't write a line of Perl code today even to save my life. Man do I love Perl modules! I learned what I needed to know in Perl to complete the project but retained little.

     

    In the beginning weeks of Covid, as the lockdown became more and more, I took up spending sometime with online Python course. Our public library has a great resource of online courses. I had hoped to retain some of that knowledge. Again the concepts and application I have but writing it, that is when I put my resurrection skills to work and cull resources using the knowledge of what I need. I also try to understand what is good coding and not just here use this. I have had shite happen in my careers maintaining others poor code and try "to the best of my ability" to not to create those beast for others.

     

    I'm rather enjoying the project so far. I made a few mistakes that have made me laugh. Reading pinout from the back side of a board and wiring from the front side of the board. Augh shite thats the wrong pin! I made similar mistakes in my careers. This project doesn't have any unreasonable exceptions. It is not under funded with no clearly defined requirements. I'm not working to a schedule that is impossible to deliverable and I don't have a project manager asking every day for status update to the Gannt chart and the question are we done yet? I do hope to have it completed before the farmers come back from the fields.

     

    Thanks for the encouraging words.

  • Nice update.

     

    Don't fret too much on the coding.

    I used to be a very good SW developer before my pain and medications took it all away.

    Now I just sit back and marvel at what everyone else can do.

     

    DAB