There it is, my DIY Arduinome 10h in all it's $2 off-brand tupperware glory!
I have some nice bits of jarrah to make a decent enclosure later.
I gave it a test run with the Amen breakbeat - it's a law, or an old town charter, or something.
Close-up of the DIY resistor network I constructed using a piece of stripboard.
All components added, ready for wiring.
Note the change of number - I accidentally erased the original number when cleaning off flux residue with isopropyl alcohol. When I flashed the FTDI serial number I set it to a40h-666 >:-}
While it was in this state I hooked it up to monomebase and confirmed how the connections line up with a piece of breadboard jumper wire and an LED. It's easy to lose track, so I drew up a little matrix and the connectors on a notepad to make sure I knew for sure what went were.
If you click through to Flickr you can read the annotations for the IN and OUT connectors.
Wired up ...
The rainbow wire wasn't strictly necessary, but it does help you keep track of what wire goes were.
I just left the unused wires floating around in case I want to use them later.
I thought about extending the 10h to a 'virtual 40h' by adding an accelerometer and tapping the appropriate side to get it to slide to the next quadrant - à la Smacbook. I don't want the hassle of tapping the 3.3v from the FTDI chip of my NG edition Arduino, so it will have to wait until I get a current generation Arduino/Freeduino board.
I think the basic idea has got legs though and people could use it to turn a 64 into a virtual 128 or 256 as well.
I popped a CD on top to give an idea of scale. The buttons are quite nice and seem to be able to take a pounding.
The LEDs aren't terribly bright, I was probably a bit conservative when I picked the current limiting resistor. You can also pop the tops off and remove the white semi-opaque diffusion 'buttons' for extra brightness. You could also print symbols or legends on a transpant sheet and insert them between the diffusion layer and the red cap to add labels, which is nice. I haven't tried it, but it should work pretty well.
I have some nice bits of jarrah to make a decent enclosure later.
I gave it a test run with the Amen breakbeat - it's a law, or an old town charter, or something.
Note the change of number - I accidentally erased the original number when cleaning off flux residue with isopropyl alcohol. When I flashed the FTDI serial number I set it to a40h-666 >:-}
While it was in this state I hooked it up to monomebase and confirmed how the connections line up with a piece of breadboard jumper wire and an LED. It's easy to lose track, so I drew up a little matrix and the connectors on a notepad to make sure I knew for sure what went were.
If you click through to Flickr you can read the annotations for the IN and OUT connectors.
The rainbow wire wasn't strictly necessary, but it does help you keep track of what wire goes were.
I just left the unused wires floating around in case I want to use them later.
I think the basic idea has got legs though and people could use it to turn a 64 into a virtual 128 or 256 as well.
The LEDs aren't terribly bright, I was probably a bit conservative when I picked the current limiting resistor. You can also pop the tops off and remove the white semi-opaque diffusion 'buttons' for extra brightness. You could also print symbols or legends on a transpant sheet and insert them between the diffusion layer and the red cap to add labels, which is nice. I haven't tried it, but it should work pretty well.
Looks great mate. Will be posting my new TGIMBOEJ to you in the next day or two.
Cheers,
Scozza.
Posted by: Scozza | 04/14/2009 at 03:58 AM
Awesome! Looking forward to it.
Posted by: Evil Paul | 04/15/2009 at 02:12 AM