Hello everybody, I am new to the forum and wanted to introduce myself and my project to y'all.
First let me preface this with I know almost nothing about electronics, ICs, or microprocessors. I have basic electricity and electronics from the Navy some 30 years ago (taught me how to use an O Scope...lol) and anything else of substance I have learned in the past 2 months. I am a software developer by trade but I am currently taking some time off from the real world.
Backk in December my beautiful daughter came to me wanting a digital LED Hula Hoop and "guess what Dad? The one I like only costs $450.00." (where only and $450 go together in her world I do not know). "But Dad, you could probably build one yourself and if you did it well enough you would have a product." Yeah, right...lol.
Anyway, I decided to embark upon the project. I did some basic research into LEDs and how people were putting these together. I then explored the world of microprocessors for 15 or 20 minutes, drew a few quick sketches and then started spending money.
I ended up buying some LPD8806 strips from a U.S. supplier I found. I also bought 2 Picaxe processors and 2 Arduino micros. I started working with the Arduinos (haven't even opened the picaxes yet). I have so far completely destroyed one of the Arduinos and am well on my way to destroying the second one. Sometime during this process I stumbled upon the Teensys and decided to buy 2 Teensy 3.0s. I am currently using the Arduino for my testing but I am getting ready to breadboard one of the Teensys and use it for the final build. I also bought enough tubing for 2 hula hoops one of them is 1 inch tubing and the other is 7/8 inch tubing.
My daughter insists that the 1 inch tubing is too big for what she wants so thus far I have been doing everything with the 7/8 inch stuff. This makes everything harder because everything has to fit into a much tinier space.
I am using 6 3.7v 10440 protected batteries hooked up parallel for the power supply. The batteries are marked as 600mah but from everything I read I will probably not get more than 300mah out of them so it should be a 3.7v power supply at approximately 1800mah.
I have the power supply built and had it piggy backed onto the LED strips. I have had it threaded in the tube once so far. I had to pull it back out because some of the LEDs got screwed up while I was threading it. I have just finished doing the necessary repairs to the LED strip and am preparing for round 2 of the threading.
The final version of this will hopefully have the Teensy 3.0 processor with the micro sd card module attached. A charge circuit (using a sparkfun LIPO charger for that). I am still trying to decide if I am going to introduce a bluetooth module into the mix or whether I am just going to use a usb cable for any programming that needs to be done.
Anyway, not much more to say about the project beyond that. Hopefully you all will be gentle with me as I ask my very newb questions.
.
First let me preface this with I know almost nothing about electronics, ICs, or microprocessors. I have basic electricity and electronics from the Navy some 30 years ago (taught me how to use an O Scope...lol) and anything else of substance I have learned in the past 2 months. I am a software developer by trade but I am currently taking some time off from the real world.
Backk in December my beautiful daughter came to me wanting a digital LED Hula Hoop and "guess what Dad? The one I like only costs $450.00." (where only and $450 go together in her world I do not know). "But Dad, you could probably build one yourself and if you did it well enough you would have a product." Yeah, right...lol.
Anyway, I decided to embark upon the project. I did some basic research into LEDs and how people were putting these together. I then explored the world of microprocessors for 15 or 20 minutes, drew a few quick sketches and then started spending money.
I ended up buying some LPD8806 strips from a U.S. supplier I found. I also bought 2 Picaxe processors and 2 Arduino micros. I started working with the Arduinos (haven't even opened the picaxes yet). I have so far completely destroyed one of the Arduinos and am well on my way to destroying the second one. Sometime during this process I stumbled upon the Teensys and decided to buy 2 Teensy 3.0s. I am currently using the Arduino for my testing but I am getting ready to breadboard one of the Teensys and use it for the final build. I also bought enough tubing for 2 hula hoops one of them is 1 inch tubing and the other is 7/8 inch tubing.
My daughter insists that the 1 inch tubing is too big for what she wants so thus far I have been doing everything with the 7/8 inch stuff. This makes everything harder because everything has to fit into a much tinier space.
I am using 6 3.7v 10440 protected batteries hooked up parallel for the power supply. The batteries are marked as 600mah but from everything I read I will probably not get more than 300mah out of them so it should be a 3.7v power supply at approximately 1800mah.
I have the power supply built and had it piggy backed onto the LED strips. I have had it threaded in the tube once so far. I had to pull it back out because some of the LEDs got screwed up while I was threading it. I have just finished doing the necessary repairs to the LED strip and am preparing for round 2 of the threading.
The final version of this will hopefully have the Teensy 3.0 processor with the micro sd card module attached. A charge circuit (using a sparkfun LIPO charger for that). I am still trying to decide if I am going to introduce a bluetooth module into the mix or whether I am just going to use a usb cable for any programming that needs to be done.
Anyway, not much more to say about the project beyond that. Hopefully you all will be gentle with me as I ask my very newb questions.
.