Wow, 26C3 was so many levels of awesome. Have I ever mentioned how much I love hackers? They are the coolest group of people on the planet. Read on for a software update, pre-order information, and contest details.
I brought 26 beta kits with me, armed with only very basic software to display frames, which was based off of the open heart code. It incorporated a few improvements, but over all, it was fairly limited. By the end of the first day, we already had scrolling text. Only a few hours into the second day it was sold out, as the people who built them on the first day had been showing them off. Someone pointed out that it would make a great belt buckle. Since it was a shield all I had to do was run the belt between the Arduino and the shield, then I walked around with it scrolling “I’m not a geek!”
The second day brought us pong, and a few different fonts. By the third day we had a basic library that used interrupts to drive the display (which means it updates automatically in the background), and you only need to set pixels on or off. There was also the starts of a serial library, and a few fonts created! I also started wearing pong on my belt with a potentiometer hanging off, which allowed people to play “Pongbelt”, and play they did. The fourth day brought us a space invader clone, improvements to the beta library, and I managed to work in some time to write the game of life. Thanks to the library, it took no time at all!
I seriously want to thank everyone who did so much at congress with this project. It’s success as a project on a whole will depend on your continued enthusiasm, and I hope to keep bringing you the best hardware I can. Not all of the software is online yet, but you can go to the newly created Google Code project to download the library, with some example programs. If you built one at congress and you’ve created something, please upload it to the project. The other news is that I’ve opened up pre-orders! You can get them with either Red or Green LEDs. Go to the LoL Shield page for more information, or just buy them here:
LoL Shield Pre-order with Red LEDs: $25 
LoL Shield Pre-order with Green LEDs: $25
The library still needs quite a bit of work. It is currently sinking all 11 LEDs on a bus to one pin at a time, which is too much power for the Arduino to source, and it causes dimming when lots of LEDs are on. I’ll have to go in there and change that, but it works well enough for now. It is substantially brighter, and works great for things like text. After that is done, then I’ll try and incorporate the serial stuff, so that you can simply send the Arduino serial, and it will display the text you send it. I want to have it write the text to EPROM so that it will remember the text even after power loss. Once that is working, then perhaps further improving the display so that we can do grey scale, and show videos and pictures. I also want it to use I2C to communicate with other Arduinos, so that they just start up and work together to scroll text, run Life, etc.
I’m going to change a few things on the PCB, but I hope to have the new ones in and tested by the end of January. They will ship shortly after that. The next PCB is going to be black, so that it contrasts with the largest number of LEDs. Since there is so much room on the back, I want to put a quote on there. I won’t be ordering them for about another week, so there is time to pick something. I’m going to open up a quick contest of sorts, leave a fun quote or phrase in the comments, and the one I like best I’ll send a free kit to! Make sure you leave your correct email address when leaving the comment. The judgement is solely up to me, and you’ve got till next Thursday at noon Eastern Standard Time to leave the comment.
Update 01/07/10: Since I’ve been sick and haven’t made the changes to the PCB file, I’m going to go ahead and extend the contest deadline by one week. Hopefully I’ll get better by this weekend and can work on some of the I2C stuff I have in mind.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Hiya Jimmie,
Just got home and recovered, and got the first samples downloaded to my arduino. Look forward to playing with the hardware and arduino code, thanks much for the good introduction in Berlin!
“The more I learn, the less I know…”
Reading your Twitter post there already where a number of funny quotes:
1.”Why aren’t the ladies playing with Pongbelt?!?”
2. “Behold! Pong belt, kneel before it’s power!”
Maybe change that into:
“Behold! LOL Shield, kneel before it’s power!”
and that’s pretty perfect
Greets Franzi
“do it for the lolz”
“hey look… it blinks!”
“one person’s blink is another person’s trouble”
“life is sweet when there’s lights!”
what the *blink*
you were telling me about some eagle tutorial videos?
blink your world!
Einfach easy!
“get pulsed or be pulsed”
“LOL Shield ~ Resistance is futile”
“go with the flow”
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. ~ Alan Kay
The man who has no imagination has no wings. ~ Muhammad Ali
D.I.Y., just ask me how. ~ me
“One Shield to rule them all,
One Shield to find them,
One Shield to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.”
anther quote which sounds good to me:
“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” F.D.Roosevelt but it fits pretty good.
and my third quote:
“nothing is impossible, if you devide it into small parts”
“Arduino now with 101% more LoL”
Greetings from Berlin, thanks for the help you provided at the congress. Since I didn’t got a LoL shield, I can’t decide wich Color to preorder ^^, maybe:
“Gotta catch ‘em LoL!”
“So relax and watch the blinkenlights”
How about:
1. “Can haz lolshieldz?”
2. “Creating a LoL a minute since 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110000″
3. “Let the LoLz Begin!”
4. “Let there be LoLz!”
Or Even:
5.
while(LoLShield()) {
lolz++;
}
(Or a variation thereof)…
I like the ‘what the *blink*’ but what about a haiku?
make it play with you
or watch life blinking away
lots of leds~
“If your not thinking about it, your playing with it”
Nicely done! Just finished assembling the first of two that I picked up from you at Penguicon. You don’t designate resistors, but I’m allergic to driving them at 5v, and would appreciate the forward voltage ratings of the red and green diodes in this kit? (And yea, I see the resistance should be dropped a bit since they pass on the forward and return current, although on return the current is much greater and I’ll probably tweak the values).
Already came up with an interesting colorful shield design inspired by you, injecting <$2.99 of additional power driving wizardry. Two of these prototype boards are designated for Mitch and you, to enjoy and get your thoughts about, before I decide that the project could be worth a large run.
Email me a postal address to mail this board to, for when they arrive here in a couple weeks (went with BatchPCB for the first experimental run).
Thanks,
I’m about to get the instructions up, but it looks like you already have it done. As for resistors, you don’t need any. When sourcing and sinking to pins, you have built in current limiting. Also, the LEDs are getting pulsed so quickly that they aren’t damaged. It’s fairly standard with charlieplexed displays to overdrive the LEDs so that they look brighter than they are. If you do want to put some in though, go with 47ohm or lower for each bus.
Also, I would love to take a look at a possible new kit. To get my address, shoot me an email jimmie at this website.
Thanks,
Jimmie
Will do … went with 39 ohms in the end, in case I connect it to something that isn’t so constrained in ma, or in case an app drives one LED for a sustained period of time before I notice it. That would be good to 30ma at 3 v on a single LED, and the intensity with Alex’s library is really consistent!
Is a “variator” just a variable resistor? What is needed to play the example code?
Completed the project, uploaded a revised fonttest.pde sketch to the GoogleCode project. Hope you guys like it.
How do I add a pot and button to the lol shield to work with tetris?
–Ira
Tetris of LoLShield V0.2.beta.zip occurred an error with arduino-0022. Not occurred with arduino-0021.