It Lives!

If you look back, you will notice that I found instructions on how to build an LED cube 9 full years ago (May 4th, 2011!).  I ordered the parts in early September of that year and started building soon after.  I finished the boards sometime around April of 2012 but wasn't confident enough in my work to try and turn it on.  For the last 8 years it has been sitting on & under my desk.

This past week I decided it was time to actually try to make it work.  I reviewed the boards and found a couple of broken wires to fix, found 2 solder traces that were wrong but over all everything looked good.

I hooked it up to the USBTiny programmer which was hooked to a Raspberry Pi (wanted Linux), sent the 'test' program to it and PRESTO it worked.  I was floored.  I did find a couple of columns didn't light appropriately which turned up a couple broken solder joints that I didn't notice.  Got those fixed and it works perfect.

Next up is to get the main program working correctly... I suspect I have a solder trace wrong somewhere but not sure yet, haven't dug into it that much yet.

Here is a short video of the test program running.

https://vimeo.com/419409567

A new update

Another year and a half has gone by since I last posted.  Lets do a quick catch up...

Work is good, boss is good, doing a lot of coding (both web & winform based) and generally just being awesome at what I do :)

Most recently, I built a replacement for my 300 CD changer using a Raspberry PI 3, a 23" touch screen monitor and software called SilverJuke.  Makes playing ripped CDs really easy.  I did have to make an enhanced interface so the buttons were bigger for the monitor.

Got a bunch of landscaping done (paid for it) that we have wanted done for 2+ years.

Replaced the dishwasher.

Freezer died, lost a bunch of food, bought a new one, moved on.

Really hate the COVID restrictions but working from home has turned out to be better than expected.

Miss my friends

Got a LOTR

Playing pinball randomly.