Testing Update

Workspace
This is a fairly small update -- not much has been happening lately, mainly because the 'wall is still at the Center Earth studio.

I bought some rope, pullies, tie-downs, and clips to mount in the workspace so I can hoist up the wall and work on it while it is vertical, but also still have good access to the back of it. When I was building it before, it was always troublesome to shift it around and get at the cabling in the back while also requiring to look at the top of it (for the pixels).

I usually ended up either blocking it up on some pieces of wood or large batteries, which generally left it just balancing there, or horizontal on sawhorses and counter-weighted on one end. I had to counter-weight it because I needed access to the back, which was hinged in the exact middle of the pixels. The power supply shadow box extended beyond that and added a bit more weight, making it more bottom heavy. The counterweights also obscured several of the pixels, making it slightly harder to debug wiring, soldering, and coding problems.

The setup that I'm working on now will get rid of all of these issues. The only problem I think I may have will be with being able to muscle the wall into position. If it becomes a bigger issue, I will have to rig up a block-and-tackle assembly to make it easier.

Pictures when I get it done...


Construction
The gluing has finally finished on the small 20-pixel test box, so I can finally start playing around with different combinations of things (e.g. 3-color LED's, different reflectors, different positioning of the LEDs). More will come with time.


Soldering
There were 2 driver boards that each had a single LED not working, so I spent a little time resoldering the pin on each of them, so they will both hopefully work now.