This project has, for a number of reasons, languished unfinished in a box for two years. Now, with encouragement and help from my friends at Hacklab.to and Site3.ca, I’ve finally completed it! In its current incarnation, it is a standalone, full-colour, interactive version of Conway’s Game of Life; with a firmware flash, it can become a monome-compatible USB interface.
features and video after the break.
From Hari:
After several tries, I was able to fit seven 8×8 matrix side-by-side on a breadboard and not have wires crossing over the displays. The key is to put the chips on one side (rather than above or below) the matrices. You can put another 7 driver chips on the right side and double this to a fourteen 8×8 side-by-side matrix!!!
By customizing the breadboard, I was able to rearrange where the power buses are and use them not for power, but to have a common bus for the eight anode rows shared by all displays.
Considering each display require only 16 wires, I was surprised how much time this took to wire up. One thing I learned from this project is that I should not be so stubborn in using the correct wire colors. I ran out of wire of correct length and color and that allowed me to work faster.
more on [AdventuresOfArduinoAndMe]
Nice nifty tutorial (difficulty level = 1) on hooking up a 12 button keypad on your Arduino.
Most keypads like this are wired so it makes it straightforward to figure out what button is being pressed. With 3 columns and 4 rows of buttons, you only need 7 wires. Typically all the buttons in a column are connected together with the same wire, and all the buttons in a row are connected together with the same wire. To determine which button is pressed, you apply a voltage to the wire attached to a column and then check the wires attached to each row to see if current is flowing through any of them. If so, then the switch for a particular button is closed (button pressed). Then you proceed to the next column and try each row again, etc. Not rocket science — just scanning a bunch of switches to see which one is closed. In fact, there is a keypad library in the Arduino Playground that makes it easy to do this.
[Michael] from nootropicdesign.com is using a 10 wires non-standard keyboard. Check-out his code.
Via [nootropicdesign]
Very nice implementation of the “Dual RG matrix shield” of WiseDuino‘s IllyClock.
Now you can edit a scrolling text to diaply longer statements. Code ready.
++
via [WiseDuino]
?Incredible 6144 led table controlled by the Arduino (!!!). With 19 of his 20 I/O pins… check this incredible experimental ikea mod from [Tobis] (and check the code).
via [Hackaday], [Ps2Cover], [Tobis Corner]
Super Mario Bros on an 8×8 LED matrix from Chloe Fan on Vimeo.
Definetly one of the more interesting “post-vintage” things I have seen around. Chloe Fan, a stundent from Carnegie Mellon University practice her knowledge of Arduino and Microcontrollers in this Super Mario related game (I created a simple version of Super Mario Bros using an 8×8 LED matrix (one color), an Arduino Nano, two buttons for the input (forward and jump), and a piezo sensor hooked to a separate Arduino for the theme song.)
Checkout the Vimeo link for code & list of hardware.
And please don’t miss the first comment from Box thor.
