BlinkenLEDsPro 1.1 engl

See also the original german version of this text.

mutante gave me his BlinkenLEDsPro kit, which he bought around the end of last year at the congress, so that i solder and build up the kit.

Current conditions are:
 * b/w mode on Windows runs.
 * grey scales dont work yet on Windows; I simply didnt have enough time yet to get into this further
 * operate it from a Linux computer also works now, including the grey scales.

I developed a wooden case with removable Polymethyl methacrylate-cover. Pictures and structural drawing comming soon.

Tools
Soldering it together was actually quite simple. With my non-adjustable 30W soldering iron with a 4mm tip, perhaps I had a little too much power on a broad tip, but except the ICs most construction units are quite durable when resisting the heat. I put alls ICs in a socket. The tin solder “SN60” has possibly also somewhat much fluxing agent for a plate circuit, but after 7.5 hr. soldering time I did not have a single cold soldered connection at first attempt.

Building guidance
As assembly guide I actually just completely followed the front photo in BlinkenLEDsPro 1.1 Readme.

sequence
Beginning with the cable links (fig. 1-3) I up-soldered gradual construction units with ever more largely becoming overall height. After the IC bases (fig. 3-1), which small condensers and the transistor (fig. 3-2) have I the 18 resistance arrays for the LEDs inserted (fig. 3-3) and afterwards installs the remaining construction units at the edge (fig. 3-4). With the 4 resistances at the edge that only lay “tricky point”, which could possibly make problems for inexperienced amateur handicraftsmen; After short comparison of the bill of material (list with values and colour rings of the resistances, see below) and the sketch to the plate (ReadMe page 3) one determines however easily: The brown-black-red resistor must be soldered perpendicularly and the brown-black-brown horizontally (with put up plate as in the photo in the ReadMe page 2), the two red-violet-red next to each other over it.

colorcodes
 * R18 100 Ω (brown, black, brown, gold)
 * R19 1 kΩ (brown, black, red, gold)
 * R20 & R21 2,7 kΩ (red, violett, red, gold)

Because the big condensator is larger than them LEDs I left them alone first.

LED-Montage
Trick: first solder them 4 LEDs on the edges; watch for same high. Then continue row after row: Insert all LEDs of a row, turn platine around and put it on a plain surface, solder them LEDs on one Pin (Fig 3-5).

Then adjust all 8 rows as perfect as possible and solder all those 2nd Pins. Cut 288 Beinchen, adjust 18 col's, done (Fig 3-6). Now solder the big condensator.

First Test
The ReadMe says, one is to now through-measure all connections. I was times courageous and the circuit (only still without connection to the PC and after more in detail optical examination of all soldered connections) to the river attached. All LEDs (up to 2, see below) flicker now lively before itself (fig. 1-4).

error on circuit board
As one can see 4-1 and 4-2 beautiful in fig., the plate has interrupted conductive strips, thus the LEDs in line 1 and 3 the 5ten column did not function. These are however probably no production errors, but damages to inappropriate treatment to attribute are (possibly in the case of transport damages).

Course 1 is clearly interrupted over several mm, course 2 and 3 has defective places. Course 2 functioned however still, course 3 is somewhere completely interrupted. After “nose-fixed” (fig. 4-3) the two dead pixels function however now also :)

As clearly is to be recognized, in particular the fig. 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 and 4-4 were taken up after the soldering work. They represent thus in no way the delivery status of the plate! Vorallem in fig. 4-2 one can clearly recognize, that with course 1 and course 3 before continuous the perfectly intact protective varnish was removed over to attempts directly on the plate tin solder to lay on around the conductivity of the courses to manufacture. Probably not least because of too much fluxing agent in the tin solder this attempt failed, left however some arrears on the plate.

Windows

 * dlportio has been missing to the enterprise of BlinkenPlayerExtrem and BlinkenLedPlayer, otherwise everything problem-free. Now and then there are "disturbances in the pixels" under Windows: It looks in such a way as from time to time the pixels in a column one down would upward or slip... :( To see e.g. at second of 3.8 in the first line with the 5th pixels from right in the Movie 6-2.
 * for gray tones are probably missing still suitable software and suitable test Movies.

Linux

 * build26.sh funktioniert als root in einer "echten" (also nicht-X-) Konsole (Strg-Alt-F1) nachdem man den Pfad zu den Kernel-Quellen angepasst hat
 * insmod lldrv.ko io=0x378 irq=7 schlägt zunächst fehl, a short glimps at lldrv.txt hilft aber schnell weiter. ,

Instead of netcat -l -u -p 2323 >/dev/lldrv one cann better use ./BlinkenOutput -l 2323 -f 18x8-1/2 -d /dev/lldrv from BlinkenLib.

QuickHowTo
as root cd /home/took/myfiles/Blinken/lldrv/lldrv-1.2.2_2006-01-08/ rmmod lp parport_pc parport insmod lldrv.ko io=0x378 irq=7 gamma=15 mknod /dev/lldrv c 176 0 chmod 666 /dev/lldrv

then $ ./BlinkenOutput -l 2323 -d /dev/lldrv

and for ; do for i in /usr/local/share/blinkenperl/movies/*.blm; do /home/took/myfiles/Blinken/Soft/BlinkenLib-0.5_2005-12-06/BlinkenSend -d 127.0.0.1:2323 -i $i; read -t 5; done; done;

or tail -n 0 -f /home/took/.gaim/logs/irc/took\@irc.efnet.pl/#seti23.chat/2006-06-13.042833.txt|java blinkenapplet/BlinkenApplet --demo1 off --sendUDPport 2323 --lauftext_schriftart 5pxStd --lauftext "0:1" --lauftext_loop no

Movies

 * 6-1. blubb-short.mov 1,6M
 * 6-2. BlinkenLEDsPro-1.1.mov 3,7M

Links

 * http://wiki.blinkenarea.org/bin/view/Blinkenarea/BlinkenLEDsEnglish
 * join now! :)