Productive Days

The tiny (p3) matrix parts arrived from China. These are just under 8 x 8 inches but because of the tiny led size, they are 64 x 64 LED in size (4096 LED total). So, got cooking. Cranked out a frame design for a single piece and a 16 x 8 frame for a pair of them. The 8 xx 8 mostly worked on the first pass (had to tweak one piece). Boxes.py is an amazing design shortcut. Would have been even more amazing had I managed to unclick the “outside” button but alas, a bit of rescaling was in order. The 16 x 8 worked with no tweaks ( see I can learn). Also came up with a tweak to the matrix wiring harness that should help make these easier to work with in future. The supplied harness splits from 2 wires into 2 pairs of 4 wires with clips for the matrix. It occurred to me that one pair of the 4 wires could be used to power the brain rather than splicing another set of wires into the harness.

I had to modify the plastic matrix frame to allow the “brain” to sit comfortably but that is why I have a rotary cutting tool. Been a while since I usedthe cutter on that tool , so a treasure hunt for my bit box ensued.

Armed with frame designs and wiring harness hacks, I cranked out 3 of the 8 x 8 versions and one of the 8 x 16 inch versions. These are small enough in led count to run on teensy 3.6 or 3.2 processors so that allowed me to clean out some of my old inventory of “brains”. It took a few passes to get the right configuration for these new panels ( 64 x 64 does not run the same as 64 x 32) but I got it all working. Happy with the results.

8-inch matrix (4096 LED).