Oh lordy and here we go with the next round of I dunno what! Ok, now we get to the reactor wall thingy. To all intents and purposes this is just a lot of flashing lights. Well sort of but not terribly obvious flashing lights. This had to be addressed in some fashion and after looking through the Velleman lists, an idea came to mind.
Lots of flashing LED's kind of idea and the best candidate I could find to fit the bill was the mini message board kit.
Velleman Mini Kit code MK124 for the curious amongst you.
Bear with me here.
Simple enough deal, a scrolling 16 character message board using a matrix of 35 LED's for display.
Thinks I to meself, what about that with LED's spread out a bit and behind a diffuser or two.
With that thought in mind and message board kit in hand, a rake of red, blue, green, yellow and white 3mm lightitup things got ordered.
Here are the electronic kit parts.
Now on the last update, I spoke about how easy these things are to put together. Well here's a quick pic of part of the instructions for the resistors for example.
Not only lists the values but tells you what the colour's are.
Simply a question of pick the right one and solder in the place clearly marked on the PCB. Now I am not the best solderer on the face of the planet by a long way. But the total time of pile o' bits to operational was about 50mins.
Not counting a caffeine and nicotine break of course.
And so the done deal.
Now all well and good but how does it look? Well a short and not brilliant vid should be showing below.
if it isn't showing however and your the curious type then by all means do the right click and 'Save Target As...' right about, HERE!
I think you can reckon out for yaselves where me be a going with this, yes? Thought you might. So then, now to the multiple LED mania.
A light box put together from 1mm plasticard and the backing drilled out to accept 35 LED's.
A mixture sort of random of the red/blue/green/yellow/white slotted in and a diffuse white each end. A slip of diffuser material... Actually some used backing sheet from my home brew dry rubdown decal paper...
Was inserted onto a 2mm strip step near what will be the front and the lot was sealed up and all LED's fitted with wire leads to go to the board.
Yeah. I know it's a hell of a lot of work and trust me it is but in the end proved to be somewhat worth it. We'll get to that in just a sec. So the wiring connected to the board and the whole shebang put in place where it should be.
So then, has it all been worth it? Well the final yea or nay rests with the client but below i've done a wee comparison thingy for ya all. The top vid is the 'real deal' in action and below that is one of my less than stellar vids showing my go at it.
if it isn't showing as sometimes happens and you really wanna know how it looks then get thee to the linky below and do the right click and 'Save Target As...' do that right about where it says, HERE!
Well anyone else I can't speak for but to me that's as good as it's a going to get in one go at it from this LED loader upper. Well now we get the wedge it all in thing a happening and after that...
Some thumb twiddling until the pilot figures turn up.
The wedgie thing if you'll pardon the expression is for the next update so until then, you lot go easy now.
