The Dome Has Arrived

Got home from work today to find a giant box in my living room. After checking it all out I started labeling the panels. Plenty to work on now!

First test fit and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to cut the inner dome. I tried turning it slightly and putting it back on over and over and it never got anywhere close to fitting.

So, the next night I have some time to work on this will be spent filing down the tabs and sanding. Once I've done that I'll have to look into how I want to go about cutting the inner done. 

Problems With Padawan Communication

I've run into a bit of a snag with integrating the Padawan System with the Teeces set. The idea behind the two working together is that certain behaviors are triggered by button presses on the ps2 controller. This is suppose to work by having the Uno send a signal to the arduino controlling the teeces lights. In my case it is sending it to a micro. I've wired everything according to the wiki page, but there seems to be no communication between the two. The sounds still fire off just fine, but not light changes.

For now it's not a huge problem. I'm quite a ways out from even installing any of the electronics into my droid, you know, because I don't have any droid pieces except for the electronics yet. =D The dome should be on it's week later this week. Daren had to order some stronger boxes as UPS was destroying the originals. Unless I magically find an answer to the Padawan issue before I receive the dome, there likely wont be any further updates until I get the dome in. Can't wait to get started on it.

Teeces Set Completed!

Last night when I got home from work I sat down and soldered the rest of my LEDs into place. Once I put all the chips in place and tested it out I ran into the first snag in my project. One of my green LEDs was constantly on, and it seemed to be at a higher intensity than the rest of them. After talking with JoyMonkey I learned that this is how the LEDs will behave if they are put in backwards. Putting one out of over 250 LEDs in backwards isn't too big of a deal, however I'm apparently terrible at removing solder.

I left the boards alone and went and saw Ironman 3 and got back to work when I got home. I expected to spend about 15-20 minutes removing the LED and putting it back in the right way around, but that's not at all what happened. >.< An hour and a half later I went to bed rather frustrated. I had not only removed the LED, but I had broken a second in the process. On top of that I was struggling to get a new LED in to replace the one I got out and I still couldn't get the second broken LED out. 

The next morning I was able to get the new LED in place before heading to work, so that brightened my mood a bit. =D I spoke to JoyMonkey again about removing the broken LED and he gave me the great advice of cutting the broken LED in half so that I could remove one lead from the solder at a time.  With that advice I was able to finish up my RLD rather quickly. The only issue remaining with that board is that I have one too many green LEDs and one missing red LED. I didn't order any spare red ones, but thankfully JoyMonkey had sent a few extra green ones. I don't think anyone will be able to tell though, so no harm done. 

In the pictures below you might be able to tell that the green in my PSI is a bit dim. All of the other 5mm I had on hand when I started seem to be pretty great for this project, but those appear to be junk to me. I ordered them all on eBay in the same auction over two years ago so I can't even tell you who I got them from. I'd stick to the ones people recommend if you plan on putting this together though =D

You'll also notice here that my PSI's are in new housings. I'll get picture of these in the future, but they're mcwhlr budget rubber PSI housings. They're pretty awesome!

Here's a short video of them running. 

Next up I'll be working on putting these into my Padawan system. From what I've read it's really just connecting one pin from the Uno to one pin on the Micro, and having a shared ground. I'll test this soon. 

Parts Have Arrived! One FLD Finished!

My parts from both JoyMonkey and China arrived and I got to work. For tonight I just put together one of my FLDs because I really wanted to see how they looked! It turned out great!

Here are a few shots showing it off. The bezels from JoyMonkey really add to the look of these displays, and they fit really well. 

Since the chips came in I also tested out my PSIs and they both look great. No pictures were taken of them yet, but I'll get some in a future update. I'll be getting the other FLD and the RLD finished up soon.