Funny thing is, I’m usually the same way. I may play with the lights from time to time, but I find myself switching them all off. It’s more of I have the lights there because I can more than anything. With teh size of the battery even if I forget to switch the stick off it’s not a huge deal. It’s more insurance since I have a 16 month old that likes to play with daddy’s toys while he’s at work…
Having the connections all on one side would have it’s advantages in making harnesses and such. That said, not sure how much easier that would make it for a casual modder, since there are still SMD components that need to be soldered, which seems more daunting than running connections and/or dremmeling buttons and switches. Either way, progress is a good thing!
Arc eye vias were placed 2.54mm apart specifically for headers, and 32teeth and spenzalli have achieved exactly what it was intended for. But most people will want a PnP solution with no soldering or demeling. I have very good solution in mind, but as i have other projects looming (plus high costs of pre-assembly), this makes make a second run highly unlikely. Once my stock runs out, I’m out (Gummowned and Bencao74 may still have stock). I’ve made my contribution to the community, so my hat is off to you if you can achieve this!
Edit: Phreakazoid is considering taking the project and running with it
Toodles was asking for that, just with common/ground connection on the same side as the RGB ones, probably so they can all be connected using a single header.
Yes I know… doing so would have been a trace/via nightmare, which is why i didnt do it in the first place… plus not everyone will dremel their button housing… but its certainly something that can be re-visited for a new version
Good afternoon gentlemen, ive been researching the type of LEDs I am going to use with my customized arc-eyes setup. 32teeth suggested 0603 SMD LEDs given the small size of the pads and the fact that there would be 3 individual LEDs on each side. The following charts show the info for each LEDs I have selected and the resistors I would need for each of those LEDs. If you guys can let me kno if I am on the right track:
You might be curious as to why I took the time to make these possibly non-snazzy charts. Well if I am successful in achieving what exactly what I want to do with my arc-eyes, then I can turn around turn this information into a tut or guide to show people some of the great things that can be done with the arcs. Im actually trying to convert a lot of my notes into visuals like this to incorporate with my work log for my upcoming stick project.
very interesting! looks good to me… only thing is when you are dealing with fV so close to battery voltage, the smallest variance can cause the current consumption to skyrocket… having said that, I found that even with a manufacturer provided voltage range, the actual current you will measure wont be the same as what you calculated… and the voltage drop wont be what you calculated either… its odd… you really do need to do a test before you solder a resistor onto the board…
so as you can imagine, i calculated using 3.7v but the battery being 0.2v higher, it was enough to triple consumption (Granted i was using too low a resistor, but you get my point?)
the voltage ranges for those colors seem awfully similar to the arc eye… so your best bet would be to try the resistor used for arc eyes first… 33ohm for ~3.3v LEDand 100ohm for ~2.2v
I was finally able to make sometime to look at this and well excellent work! I can tell you are patient man, and give attention to care and craftsman ship. I was amazed with how did the pin headers and the custom wire harness, good shit!
Yeah man I definitely remember you mentioning those points about the forward voltage being close to battery voltage. Im just trying to narrow down the types of resistors I need to get as opposed to getting a whole range, but after revisiting these charts its becoming more evident that I will just have to get a range of them from the lowest prolly up to 100ohm and after trial and error narrow down to exactly whas needed. I am going to append the charts with a column for the actual measured voltages and what resistors Ill actually use.
I have a new question. 32teeth suggested that I use 0603 smd leds. In a retarded turn of events, my xbox RRODed on me saturday, so I took it apart and fixed it, and to my amazement it still works. When I was taking it apart, when I removed the RF module that has the ring of lights and was looking at those leds, according to docs I found on a site those are supposedly 0603 led, what I noticed is that they are EXETREMELY small! I havent got my arcs yet, so I am not able to make a direct comparison, but it looks like they might be too small and they will land in between the pads. Are any slightly bigger form factors? Whats the vertical distance between the pads? Im also concerned if they will be bright enough, the ones are the 360 rol are brightish but they are behind specially molded acrylic pieces that help spread the light.
I just saw this vid and congratulations on completing your work on this fine stick, now enjoy it! The only thing I that I can say about the vid, is that when you flipped the stick around the show the pcbs and stuff, the video was really dark and you really couldnt make out much detail as to what is going on in there. Fine for me, because you posted some really good pics of your wiring work for the pcbs and stuff on the previous page, but if someone just saw the vid and didnt see the pics then might actually be wondering exactly how you did your stuff in there
About the 0603 Leds : Perhaps they do not fit. Im using 0603 resistor, but the led footprint is larger than the resistor footprint. So, go with the 0805 LED. Quite sure that they'll fit. Ive used 0603 RGB leds in this mod
The KNserts are only white, but I already have an RGB version laid out (entirely 24mil or better traces, 3 vias). I haven’t gotten around to ordering them quite yet but I will order some boards for testing soon. I just think it’ll be a little bit before I have an RGB LED controller put together.
Hey Phreak, header pinout on mine will be R-G-B-Gnd. I didn’t know if you might want to match or go in another order.
@Toodles PM me - i will share my .cpp and .h files for Sparky
You may be saying - Qu’est-ce Sparky?
Sparky, Sparky Shield and Sparky Jr are RGB LED controllers.
Both the Sparky and Sparky Jr feature FTDI headers for programming a user supplied ATMEGA328 chip
All feature multiplexing for up to independently controlled 8 RGB LEDs
Each Color is addressable via the RGB pin header and the common are supported via the headers labeled so. Sparky Jr. version includes the addition of screw terminal for the RGB if desired.
A unique feature is the jumper to support common anode. By default, the chipset / code are set for common cathode. the jumper provides a software level detection and switches accordingly
Additionally a ‘remote’ reset via holes are provided for wiring to external pushbutton / momentary switch
If you’ll tell me the pin mappings, I’ll try to match it as best I can, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have the TX and RX pins free for an FTDI cable. I way prefer using a debugwire connection for development.
Sparky looks great. Ages ago I presented you the layout of Lighting Strike. I`ve produced some of the boards, but the footprint was messed up for some SMD ICs. I used a lib for the ULN2803 with wrong footprint. This was stopping tehn my activities on this project. Would be fun working on a common RGB controller device. What do you think? Put the FW source to open source like Dual Strike? I´m quite sure that Ivlephisto is contributing, too.
I was wondering about the current. You driving high current loads above the specification of AVR pins. Or did you find a way around it?
The features sounds awesome. Do you know the configuration editor of dual strike? Its graphical user interface for configuring hardware settings in Dual Strike. Ive discussed with IvlePhisto adapting this editor to support light setting for upcoming RGB controller.
