Lets start a new project!!!!

I just recently acquired a non-running, non-licensed 1979 Porsche 924.

needs a bit done to it.

to be continued…

Since my last post, the two screens have expanded to six. I did have a few problems at first because running six screens requires 2304 bits of data (that’s 1s and 0s for you primitives out there ) to be sent via one wire. The result: slow as a fat kid on crutches painfully slow.

But never fear as there was a solution! Making use of the extra cores (this microcontroller has 8 processors) I can split up the processing to reduce the amount of data sent at one time. 2304 bits split using 6 wires sending 384 bits per wire. Did you get all that?? Good lets continue.

I also borrowed code to process lines and circles. Next step is displaying bitmap graphics and animations. And maybe glue the screens together to make it all neat and tidy. Got to make it look professional!!

Video shows my child like voice and a line of text scrolling vertically and horizontally while drawing lines and circles. It’s works really well. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below

So here we are…

I’ve been playing around with some different techniques in building a LED Matrix display. Some things have worked and some have failed. There are also products out there that would make this build so easy but are really expensive. However, after a bit of hunting i found these on E-Bay for $14AUD with free postage!

What they are is a set of six 8×8 LED matrixes (384 LEDS in total) all controlled by just one IC. You can run four of them together by chaining them with the provided ribbon cables and many more if your microprocessor can handle them.

Really easy to interface hardware wise but quite tricky to code compared to using shift-registers. It works a little bit like running an LCD interface where you have to first issue commands to tell the screen what you want it to do, then tell the screen where you want the lights to come on, then finally tell it to turn on that light.

So my first step to getting these bad boys to work was to see if anyone else has done it before. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any code for the Parallax Propeller but i did find a huge forum topic on the matrix using the Ardunio (another type of Microprocessor, completely different language). I had to then convert the code from Ardunio (C Language) to the Propeller (Spin Language). And eventually it worked out great!! Except there is a couple of glitches to fix up later.

Before photo

After smashing the windows out and bricking up the outer wall. My first brick laying experience!! can you tell?

Had to make a stud wall for the inner wall. meant I didn’t have to do any plastering.

Plasterboard – Awesome stuff. very cheap.

TV Cables in place.

Filling in the gaps.

First coat of paint. You can no longer tell that there used to be a window there!!

TV cabinet just got delivered. minus the furry critics.

Just one more thing to put up now…

New TV!!! woo hoo, Warhawk anyone!!

After looking and reading various sites, I came to the conclusion that
1) I don’t really know what I want to order as I haven’t designed the playfield yet.
2) I don’t really know how pinball parts work… yet

Found on Ebay!

So, then i looked towards my friend Mr Ebay. Where i found an old wrecked pinball machine. In fact it was just the playfield for the game Black Knight 2000, and came with most of the parts. I managed to get it home for around AUD$250. It came from Queensland and shipping was the most expensive part!

Mini Playfield

Delivered to my work on a huge semi-trailer and the driver wanted to know if I had a forklift to take it off the truck. “Mmm are you serious?!” i asked and he was dead serious and then proceeded to show me the package… Now I know when working you need to be careful of lifting to much weight or you may cause injury. But it was obvious that all people involved shipping it from QLD to WA thought it weighed a shit load more than it was and used a forklift at every opportunity. The pinball playfield is made of 13mm ply and with the parts maybe weight around 20kg (don’t quote me on that).

At home I proceeded to strip down the playfield into individual parts. Oh Man this thing was dirty, and was so dirty it stained our white rug…oops. I’m pretty sure it had been in a damp shed for over a decade or two. It was sad to see it in such bad condition. Black Knight 2000 seems like a really classic pinball machine and would have been lots of fun to play. But it consisted of lots of parts for me to tinker around with and had to dismantled.

Above turned into this:
Arrhh… Look at all that booty!

The voting was so close between Napoleon Dynamite and Shaun of the Dead.
So I sat down recently and watched the two movies again.

The ideas started flowing… mostly for Shaun of the Dead.
After all you can’t go wrong with Zombies.
Would be so fun having the Winchester Pub at the back of the playfield while zombies are poping up all over the place.

I have sortened down my list to the following:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. ]]> http://mrt.id.au/index.php/2010/07/help-me-pick-a-theme/feed/ 7 http://mrt.id.au/index.php/2010/07/the-matrix/ http://mrt.id.au/index.php/2010/07/the-matrix/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:24:35 +0000 Tom http://test.mrt.id.au/?p=32 Not this kind

but I do think that “The Matrix” would make a pretty cool pinball theme.

The 8 x 8 LED Matrix is a square consisting of 64 LEDs (lights). 8 columns by 8 rows. I plan to use many sets of 8 x 8 matrixes to form a super matrix 24 LEDs high by 128 LEDs wide. Making it a total of 3072 LEDs.

Now this would require loads of soldering and many many hours of work. To cut the workload down I can purchase 48 single 8 x8 LED Matrix boards, each consisting of 64 LEDs.However there is a catch, you cannot simply light any combination of lights on a matrix. You have to scan down very quickly line by line, from top to bottom. Just like how a TV or Monitor works.

Using a Shift Register to control the Columns and another to control the Rows. I’m able to output any shape/character i like. In this case a smiley face.

So the solution is to use an Integrated Circuit (little black plastic chip with pins sticking out of it) called a Shift-Register. Basically it takes the serial signal from 1 single port from the CPU and splits it up to 8 outputs. So my next project was to make a 24 LED chaser circuit. Which worked flawlessly.

That white plastic board is called a breadboard. Used for prototyping circuits.

Next project …to get a shitload of LEDs together to make a video screen.

The processor runs at 80Mhz and has 8 cores. Meaning i can run different parts of the machine at the same time. For example Input/Output on the first Core, Sound/Music on another, and Video on another core. You connect it to a PC with a USB cable and upload all your code into it. Once uploaded you can disconnect it from the PC and use to run nearly anything you like.

So after a few late nights of soldering… checking the circuit with a multimeter… cursing… resoldering… rechecking… and resoldering. I managed to get it to…

…Make a LED flash on and off! Woo hoo I thought! As I was now off to the creation of a very complicated computer (for me) for a pinball machine.