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From the Forum: Project Northern Lights
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The force (push) is strong with this one...
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Jumbo1K: 32x32 LED Networked Display
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Weekend Project: NExuS
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WyoLum TinyTiM Available
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MSP430 Nixie Clock By Rob
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The ESP8266: Taking the New Hotness for a Spin
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Faster Raspberry Pi!
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Mail Bag Monday - 8000 LEDs Edition
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Adafruit Matrix Hat Support for BiblioPixel
Hello! We’re not dead yet! Now that the holidays are behind us, we’re going to get back into the swing of posting more content on a regular basis. We’ve got some neat things coming up, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out this Freaking Awesome arcade joystick built by forum user [mlapsa]. BiblioPixel was used to control the LED strips inside of the wood and Lexan case. Excellent work!
Read more…Git is awesome. It’s not just open source, but in the last few years, with the help of sites like GitHub, it has cemented itself as the source control software for open source. At Maniacal Labs we use it for everything and the same goes at my day job with Red Hat. At the latter, I’ve found myself having to use the “push –force” option a lot recently due to some oddities with the way our code review process works (that’s a much longer post for another time) and of course the joke about it being a “force push”, as in Star Wars, came up a lot.
Read more…Over two years ago, I bought this awesome display panel: 1484-02 It’s a 7.5” square, 32x32 resolution, 6mm LED spacing, panel that would normally be used for digital signage. Though it is a “dumb” display that requires CPU intensive multiplexing (it’s supposed to be driven by an FPGA or ASIC), with the right tools it can be way easier to use than building, ahem, other types of displays ;) I have covered this exact panel a few other times, but after a couple years of sitting in my LED storage it was time to finally make it something awesome.
Read more…NExuS Introduction I’ve had an NES (my wife’s actual childhood NES, in fact) sitting in my parts drawer, with the intent of ripping it apart, gutting it, and jamming in a Raspberry Pi to make an awesome emulation box since… well, ever since the Raspberry Pi came out.
Read more…We’ve shown off pre-production versions before, but our friends at WyoLum have just made the awesome TinyTiM available! The TinyTiM, much like their larger TiM, is an awesome, well-made (by the same manufacturer as the AllPixel!), and versatile 8x8 LED matrix based on the WS2812 LED. And it’s 100% compatible with the AllPixel! As usual, Justin from WyoLum is super awesome and sent us some early production boards… WyoCube
Read more…MSP430NixeTubeClock-11 I saw this kit come up in Tindie’s twitter feed, and instantly knew that I wanted one. It’s relatively inexpensive, not very complex, and it looks amazing (especially with the acrylic front and back plates).
Read more…ESP8266 You’ve probably heard about this little module by now; a cheap, wifi-enabled bit of wizardry that is all the rage. Using serial communication, you can talk to the device and send commands out to the interwebs.
Read more…Previously, I talked about the ODROID-C1 as a possible, faster alternative to the Raspberry Pi. Well, there’s a reason I haven’t mentioned it again… the software is a mess. It just doesn’t have the community around it that the Pi does. Most disappointing was that their USB Serial kernel driver was a total mess and would not work with the AllPixel :( So, that’s why I’m so excited about the new Raspberry Pi 2!
Read more…Time for everyone’s favorite segment… err, never done this one before. And it’s something we ordered… but for other people, so we’ll say it counts. For the awesome folks at TriEmbed, our local electronics enthusiast group, we decided to put together a bulk order of LEDs with the manufacturer we are using for the AllPixel Kickstarter rewards. It’s not everyday you get $2000 worth (more like $5000 street value) of LEDs in the mail, so it seemed best to document the unboxing.
Read more…So, last week, Adafruit launched this little beauty. Having just acquired a handful of Pi B+ and A+ boards and already having a 32x32 matrix that I’d been meaning to use, this was a complete insta-buy™. And, of course, I had to make it work with BiblioPixel! Well, it showed up last night and the coding commenced! Fortunately, Adafruit already had a library ready to go with a handy python wrapper, since the main code is all C.
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