I've been a bit quiet lately,

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I’ve been a bit quiet lately, because I’ve been quite busy :slight_smile:

The power/control box, capable of pumping out 1kW @ 12V, got hooked up tonight. Quite proud of how neat the job turned out, possibly even safe. Fused,to boot!

The Teensy 3.1-based control board (with 16 parallel output channels!) is rock solid. Need to add a master brightness knob and possibly a regulator so it’s driven off the big 12V PSUs rather than the USB, but that ought to be straightforward.

Thank you once again @Ashley_M_Kirchner_No for the design help with the PCBs; I’ve hooked a couple up and they’re working great.

So far I’ve built two of the 160-LED sticks; only 14 to go, hopefully I’ll have time for that on the weekend. When I’ve got a few more done plus some basic MIDI control I’ll post some video.

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Very cool!
Any tips to pass along to the class?

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Oooh fantastic! So was the custom PCB the solution to being able to solder to those DC-DC converters? Interesting that the boards have that bend in them. How did you achieve that? Looking forward to seeing it running in all its full glory.

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Nice! Glad things worked out.
@marmil , the board aren’t bend. What you’re seeing is the original DC-DC converter soldered at the end of the custom PCB. @Robert_Atkins just didn’t solder them flat. :slight_smile:

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Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining that @Ashley_M_Kirchner_No ​. Still looks good to me, and since it’s going to be all tubed up the angle shouldn’t matter one bit.

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You had me at “possibly even safe”! :slight_smile:

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Yes @marmil , I was only able to get this far thanks to @Ashley_M_Kirchner_No 's generous help in designing those. The reason the Muratas are “bent” is because I would have had no chance at soldering them flat onto the tracks as I anticipated. Very thick pins, very close together—I found it almost impossible to get the solder to wet onto the pins, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but I have never found good way to hold my soldering job firmly where I need it; bending the pins through the holes fixed that problem for me.

Lessons so far, but I will do a write-up when it’s all complete:

  1. Neutrik SpeakON and PowerCON connectors are great! Solid as f*ck.
  2. Proper commercial power cabling and Wago lever-nuts holding the mains-voltage side of the shop together plus fuses and a proper switched IEC socket gives me confidence nothing is going to catch fire. It looks neat.
  3. There’s never enough space in the box for all the wiring. Have everything together before you start assembly
  4. Bits-and-pieces over and on top of the main component list cost significantly more than you think (like, closer to 40% than 20%)
  5. Having the right tools (drill press, band saw…) is amazing
  6. Even if you do have them, it will take longer than you think
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Oh, and special bonus insight: RTFM!

The plan was to use the Teensy 3.1’s 16-way output, with 160 pixels off each pin. After getting enough of it built that I could attach a stick of 160 pixels to both the “first” and the “last” pins it seemed like the first one was getting updated before the last, and there was quite a significant lag. Then I read that to use 16-way output you have to use a specific set of the Teensy’s pins, in a specific order! So, back to the literal drawing board for me…