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Blog BYOB Party #4, Mr UNO and his message board
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  • Author Author: Robert Peter Oakes
  • Date Created: 16 Dec 2014 5:17 AM Date Created
  • Views 1268 views
  • Likes 5 likes
  • Comments 9 comments
  • iot_holidaylights
  • byob_party
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BYOB Party #4, Mr UNO and his message board

Robert Peter Oakes
Robert Peter Oakes
16 Dec 2014

Party Message Board

 

Back to the beginning BYOB Party #1, "Bring you own Bulbs" - The Internet of Holiday Lights

 

I hope your all finding the information useful so far, this is proving to be a fun packed challenge

 

For today I have chosen to test out the 16*32 panels I bought from Adafruit, they arrived today image (yaaa, so many presents already ), these are not really meant for UNOs and the like, there really for massive street signs and ideally driven by powerful FPGA based systems but the great folks at adafruit have done a superb job of writing some libraries to allow them to be driven by even an UNO or a Mega with plenty of room to spare for other code, these displays have to be driven as a matrix actively by the UNO (There not neo pixels) so a fair percentage of cpu time needs to be used to scan the images onto the panel

 

This is what you get:

image

 

You can find all the code and wiring details here: http://www.adafruit.com/product/420 and believe me, these things are awesome, wire them up as instructed, apply power and a test sketch and it just works, It was even working before I connected the correct supply to the panel (Albeit a bit dimly)

 

My plan it to have Mr UNO or Mrs Yun drive this and possibly another to display web messages of cheer from a web site or twitter feed, may need moderation though or a menu of messages to select from, but for now I wanted to test how easy it is to use and send a holiday greeting to my companion competitors and eager followers

 

so here is the video of this working, and I have to say, these things are AWESOME

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WARNING:

While I'm on the subject of testing, I did discover an annoying feature of the Infineon RGB Board (Or more specifically the Yun and its compatibility with Shields) , It wont fit on the Yun without using a set of Stacking headers (The kind you get if your making your own shields)

 

Here is what happens without

image

As you can see, the board barely makes contact with the sockets and it is already hitting the top of the Ethernet port, nothing that a set of stacking headers cant fix, but of course you need the headers, also available from Adafruit

 

Now it works (The stacking header pins are long, they are well and truly inserted)

image

 

OK, that's it for this update, with luck more goodies will arrive tomorrow and I will share more details of how to connect up and where to get libraries

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  • Robert Peter Oakes
    Robert Peter Oakes over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    It does support writing on it, it just takes all the memory etc, in the final solution I had to migrate to an Arduino MEGA in order to be able to add NRF Radio communications etc.

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  • Robert Peter Oakes
    Robert Peter Oakes over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    It has basic functionality, I just went in and modified the demos, I intend to have 3 or more together soon

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago

    MY QUESTION IS, HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THIS IF ARDUINO DOESN'T SUPPORT TO WRITE ON IT ?  Thanks again.... Juan

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago

    Hi:  From Adafruit's website say : Displays are 'chainable' - connect one output to the next input - but our Arduino example code does not support this yet.  MY QUESTION IS, HOW DID YOU SEAL WITH THIS IF ARDUINO DOESN'T SUPPORT TO WRITE ON IT ?  Thanks again.... Juan

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago

    Hi: I am from UK and I would like to know if this project coming with whole kit to make it up. And , please could you tell me witch name is this project to search it or how can I see by online all materials? Many thanks for your time and congratulation to  link your project. I have to build a project to get my diploma and I will wonderful if you have any recommendation. Thanks . Juan

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