RE: how to turn on a power supply without a motherboard

Anonymous Says:
November 29th, 2005 at 9:19 pm e
I have a few questions. First, what are the outputs of your power supplies? I remember MIT saying you need 5V/4A per board. Second, how did you calculate the required resistor values (1.5K, and 3.3K)? And lastly, do you have one power supply per board, or how do you have it setup?

Ok, the resistor to keep the power supply on and the 5 volts with 4 amps are independent of one another.

The PS-ON is a pin on the power supply that is dedicated toward just saying, "Hey, I'm on" and powers up the power supply (PSU). The motherboard normally will create this however here by connecting a ground to it, it creates the connection. Badabing, it turns on.

My resistor values are what was required to keep the power supply on. You could do a straight up wire to do this, but I used the minimal resistor value needed. I systematically went through and found the minimal value for both the PSU's I bought.

The reason why I like computer PSU's are they already have a powerful 5 volt line in them and they are cheap. A multitasker if you will (That's right, I watch Good Eats). Also they already provide a "cleaner" power chances are cheaper than I could custom make an AC to DC power adapter.

From there you only need to worry about Amps. Volts are constant; the amps will split among the "branches".

I have 2 PSU's for my disco dance floor, each power supply is rated to 30 amps for the 5 volt line. Without overloading it, it can then can power 7 boards. It does have a 60 amp overload. I'm opting for caution and using 2 when I could use just one.

To split the power, I created a power splitting block. I have two (one per PSU)

With that, I must go to Diversy Rock & Bowl for ... bowling before my friend Elysia kicks my ass for not showing up to her birthday party. Seriously, she hits ... and hard. And I'm man enough to say it hurts cause I'll send her after you for making me late (which I already am but shhh).

1/4th the way done. 1/4 the wire has both sipp sockets on. I still need to apply the twist but that is trivial at this point.

Yeah ... I'm still not looking forward to hauling home the other roll of wire from work. Won't be brought back until atleast Wednesday since my work is taking us all out bowling. <shameless plug since I work for them> if you need a content management system, check out Doc Exchange. </shameless plug since I work for them>

Also some mad prop's to my buddy Adam Wolverton for helping me do the wiring. I'm aware of how amazingly fun the task is.

the hot glue btw is required for some of the sipp sockets. breaking them in half caused the end on a few to degrade pretty bad and when soldering, the connection just went fubar.

As for the cubes, I only made 52. That is a small test run for the full amount that is required of 224. 174 more to go plus endcaps.

time for me to get to work.

Anonymous Says:
November 27th, 2005 at 10:03 pm e
Can I ask why you decided to do a ton of individual cubes instead of just using long pieces of wood? It seems like a lot of extra work for you

Why? because I live in an apartment and move every year or so. I need a modular design that can be easily broken down and fix into whatever random vehical I borrow for the move. Also if I want to reconfigure it to lets say 16 feet x 1 foot per module or some other weird configuration, I can. I wanted something extremely modular and that was the design I came up with. It is the programmer in me.

It is a lot of extra work however it also provides a lot more power in my opinion. I need to sand still too. All I need to do is build (or modify) the outter super structure and bam, I'm done. I know I could have created a different style structure but where is the fun in that?

painful to create? but on the upside, I got to watch a crap ton of TV while building it.

lots of pictures

clamps and some hot glue

Miter Saw action

the new blade

clamps

Mr. Staples

Mr. Staple's food

After some action

Some wood snow

Mr Staple's power source.

More Power?

design on paper

wood stock

Design in wood

Exploded 1

Exploded 2

wood cut and stacked

wtf did I get myself into?

some clamping

now to combine them

coming together

my brother being helpful

mr clamp meets mr wood

coming together

all done

stacked up and 52 strong

Got a new 1.75 HP BodyGrip Router, a router table, and a 80 tooth 12" circular saw (using my dad's Miter saw). Pictures for my grand scheme will be up soon as I'm back to my apartment.

When my dad looked at my design and said I was sick, I knew I was good.

I bought 10 10ft 1x4 boards. I know i'll need more but this was a test build right now. However, from those 10, I got 220ish 'slugs' from so it should be a decent amount.

Something tells me I won't make myself inposed deadline of New Years the more I think about it.

Time to get back to work for me.

After much thought, I find the only time I really seem to put coding time in on the application is when I'm on the Metra train it seems like. Due to this and Thanksgiving (required me to be on the metra ... and getting off at the wrong stop ... thank god for cellphones), I got random animation files done along with the base frame for Image to Animation. I do have some base code for how to do animated gifs and am building this into the code for the future. Right now it will just do static images. Will work same way as the Animation files where they will get resized to fit your board size, not the "default size" of 16 cols x 32 rows.

I do have one major issue of cross thread data accessing that I'm not totally sure how to defeat it be honest. Triggering an event doesn't seem to cause it to be able to access it without throwing the exception. still ... a stupid UI issue, not the meat of the application.

and I'm still working on getting my hands on a release build of Visual Studio 2005.

Hope you had a happy glutton day

see title. Got 19 7 feet wires to do, 48 8.5 wires to do and 54 9.5 feet wires to do.

1 more roll. Less stripping but way more wire lengths.

update: btw, a roll in this syntax is 5000 feet of wire

I actually did do some coding on the train trip to and from to score my xbox 360.

I tweaked how animation files work for random files to load. And in doing so, I set myself up perfectly for loading animation files.

score!

Alas, I ran into my nemsis of cross thread object access. what currently happens is the UI's thread is indepentant of the thread that actually writes to the floor. I want a progress meter for animation files but can't due to this. Maybe the RTM version of .Net 2.0 has some cool way to do this. But as of this point in time, I'm a tad too tired to think much more about this.

That's right ....

My new spool of wiring just came in. Time to crank out those uber annoying longer lengths.

I highly suggest drinking heavily while prepping the wire since it is so mundane of a task. I've, for all intensive purposes, depleted one mile of wiring. I have 28 7 foot, 48 8.5 foot, and 56 9.5 foot lengths left to cut I believe. I don't have my cheat sheet with me so that is my best estimate.

Now the question of why my board only needs 450 LEDs instead of 1344. Because my LEDs are just naturally better. No, actually I went with Tri colored LEDs. So I only have one instead of 3. Makes me 3 times more efficient and sexier says an independent, non-scientific study I took over the weekend at a bar.

LED progress: I've gotten 5 out of the 6 needed bends already done. I'm about 1/3 the way through the last bend. I still need to add in the heat shrink, the final snip, mount to a SIPP, and then solder it up. I may change how these are soldered to the SIPP socket after doing a test solder on the hook up wire. I think it will be easier to do the LED to male SIPP on the LED instead of hook up wire.

is an example of what I'm talking about regarding the bends. 6 in total. You get surprisingly good at it once your arm goes numb.

I also managed to watch a ton of TV this weekend due to having to put in a ton of man hours on the bending and cutting. I can honestly say I'm an expert on World War 2 now due to the History Channel.

a buddy and myself are doing a side project. Need to PCB it now. I find drawing the circuit is easier than attempting to read a diagram and attempting to solder it with all the same wire color. Need to go to radioshack and get another PCB due to this.

a bread board drawing

kinda working bread boarded version

I bought some new tools today at Radioshack. I like the mag glass since it has locking clamps so I basically have some extra hands helping me. Made doing the final wiring on the power blocks SO much easier. (see http://betterthaneveryone.com/?p=56 for my power solution) I only had 6 out of the 10 wired up with endings so when I scored some extra plugs, popped those in.

Now on to the clamps. I figure they'll come in handy when I'm doing the other end of the wiring. Which is also why I bought the wire strippers. Even though I only need to do 6 more groups, I think the new one will help since it is all automagical and I just need to squeeze. Plus it will give me a consistant strip length.

NOW to wiring ... I have am only going to do 8 wires for the 9.5 until I get my other 5000 roll. The 9.5 feet rolls will consume 2500 feet worth of wiring. I already took this action with the 8.5's and will soon to with the 2nd set of 7 feet. And the rest of the wire will go to the 5.5 feet. Which I'm iffy if it will actually even be enough to do all 28 wires. But I do want to be able to wire up 2 modules 100%.

Thanksgiving weekend I'll score a table saw and do some videos of my brother and me building the floor. Something tells me 80% of the audio isn't going to be work safe.

old man glasses

Johnny 5 wire strippers

medical locking clamps.

The LEDs I got were from LEDtronics.com for $1.08 each when buying 700 of them. L200CWRGB1K-4A-IL is the model number. Data Sheet

The specs on them is 915 mcd for Red, 980 for Green, and 270 for Blue with a 60 degree spray of goodness. Now remember that you'll need a Common Anode, not Cathode when working on these boards.

Now I had a slight issue with the company last Friday since when my credit card was charged, it was double charged and then they didn't use the quoted price of $1.08, instead they used the $1.80. .72 cents does not seem like a lot until you multiple it by 1400 (700 leds time 2 for the double charge). I wasn't a happy camper but after calling them up, everything was straightened out and is copasetic now.

Now before someone goes head strong into buying these, they may not be bright enough. They were within my budget and provided a very nice convenience factor. They may not work for everyone. Hell, they may not work for me even. I'm hoping the wider spread will help defeat the weakness of it. I will say when testing them, I had sun spots for minutes afterwards.

Soon I'll have pics on how to bend them since the pins do not match how the board's pins are. 6 bends are required, 2 small pieces of shrink tube and one snip of the wires.

what 700 leds look like in bagged form

And my remaining power plugs since I'm stupid and broke 3

updated my costs: $2,191.70

I'm estimating it will cost me $3,300 by the end due to the Polycarbonate and needing a table saw and drill.

Just got the confirmation email telling me my 2nd roll of wiring shipped out. Rock on. I'd figure it should be here on Monday or Tuesday.

This means I'll be doing wiring and LEDs for sure this weekend so I can start cranking stuff out.

The be in. And know I know that 700 LEDs will come in a box about 10"x6"x5". And it is a brown box too.

Holy turd burglar, my LEDs are RoHS compliant. The wonders of a Bright green sticker and me actually reading something.

A A USB-to-Ethernet Device Server (LanTronix UBox): comment link

actually, that sounds kinda neat. Bit more than the 20 bucks I was thinking of spending max per Hub though. Does provide an interesting way to admin the floor but I'll still need something powering the music AKA a computer. I have an IBM thinkpad with a creative lab's USB sound card with optical out to my receiver. Overkill, yes but damn cool. Could do a AirPort Express then for the stereo. Still would perfer an optical out solution for audio though. Anyone know of an Audio to Ethernet Device Server?

And it gives me an excuse to set up my switch on the network now too.

But in all seriousliness, I think those are a tad too expensive for me right now. But does give me some food for though cause I'm not thrilled about having to keep my laptop out while doing a party but then again, I'm worried for my TV too. Actually more worried about the TV than laptop but you get the idea.

Plus the cost of the device does raise some issues. A Mac Mini or a mini-PC will cost about the price of 2 of them. I'm not even sure if I can only buy one and another USB hub to create enough ports with the UBox.

The Aopen miniPC (think mac Mini just with an Intel in it running windows) costs about 400-500 bucks. It is small enough to be hidden and could be controlled via a web services. And would be a pretty nice little home entertainment system if I could score a copy of Media Center PC on it too. Make it play nicely with my xbox 360 and on the TV .... mmmmm. And remember, RAM is your friend gig chip that mofo no matter what if you go the PC route. The preformance boost is amazing.

seriously now ... i sleep.

modded wire spool

5 feet waiting to be SIPPed and Soldered

My little cheat sheet

The cheat sheet legend:
X's (red and green) are the SIPPed, soldered, stripped and cut lengths. The blue little corner ticks are what I have cut or stripped, just not in a completed state yet.

I'm hoping the mod to the wire spool will actually aid in measuring and cutting. I literally did that a couple minutes ago since it was getting progressively harder and harder to pull wire out. Hopefully it will help else Mr. Dead Blow hammer will fix it.

I would have sipped and soldered tonight but I just don't feel like it. Worked 11 hours today redoing a User Interface and thought cutting / stripping the 5 feeters was enough while watching House and drinking a beer.

I just realized I haven't gotten some USB hubs ... I really should do that some time.

the longer the lengths, the more it sucks. As I stated before, I think I can do everything except for the 8.5 and 9.5 lengths.

Greetings from Washington University. We've been checking out your site, it looks like you have made great progress. The deal with our 'multiple failures' was directly linked to integrating the controllers into structure of the floor (MIT had it all pushed out the side, out of harms way). With 6" pixel gaps it made for a tight squeeze. We also didn't cut the holes for the USB connection big enough so that if you jump on the floor it transfers the vibration to the connection which, as they mentioned, is weak already. This is something that is easily fixed and really only a product of hundreds of people jumping on it at once. A few people would probably not cause an issue.

As for our software, it is being done by a CS class and will be open-sourced when its finished. The semester is not over so its not ready to be released. For Vertigo we had a client-server setup. The server ran via the console on a rackmounted dual processor server
(overkill) loaned to us by the engineering school. We had this stuffed under the stairs near the floor and ran USB to the floor. This was connected via ethernet to a laptop on the third floor that did the actual work. The GUI on the client side connects to the server and then has a playlist feature to load animations and implement other unique things.

The software worked great, and its still in development. Look for it sometime after the new year.

Later,
Pehr Hovey
WU IEEE President

Taras Says:
November 14th, 2005 at 1:13 am e
Hey Clint I'm still here watching you progress.
Any way this ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY thing is NEW to me also.
WOW what is next ill keep this one in my to do list for my ESSAYS lol.
I c you have been busy man i i could i would help you NJ is a bit far but keep up good work.
Anyway did you see the finished WU Dance floor, your thoughts.

Yeah, I saw their Dance floor and happy they got it up and working but they did state it had multiple failures while working. They claim they have software written for it but haven't really seen much about that.

As for me being busy, just had my birthday and let me just say, cutting wire while hung over ... not fun. I've gotten 7/16 wire groups done now (literally just finished solder and sipping the 3.5' and 7' lengths).

My LEDs should be in some time this week however there are multiples issues so they may be returned ... I'll have more soon as it is resolved for better or worse.

Plus I have xbox 360 which I hopefully should get on the 22nd. If you haven't noticed since my application is written in c#.Net 2.0, I'm kind of a Microsoft whore. But then again, being a c# developer pays the bills. I'm attempting to get as much done right now before that distraction comes.

Really hoping I can build the entire floor over at my parent's house during Thanksgiving. I can't see that taking more than a day to whip out once everything is set up and a plan is hashed out. That should have some really funny pictures and movies from knowing my brother and dad. And by funny, I mean us yelling at one another about who is getting who a

And I still need to solder the ends for the LEDs.

Am I RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant? hell no. To my knowledge, my wiring isn't since Newark does list their RoHS parts. My soldering wire isn't since it contains lead. I did use some lead free solder, but that was for a tad here and there. If memory serves, it was for the power plugs.

Who knows how the boards were made or the rest of the bill of materials is.

Why am I bringing this up? Cause the RoHS is a new thing to make electronics environmentally friendly. xbox 360 is RoHS along with progressively more products. Just figured all you hippies that are making it best opt for the tree-friendly options.

Why didn't I use the MIT recommend environmentally friendly wiring? Cause it was stranded wiring and it didn't play nicely with my solution. I do actually have the wiring purchased and was ready to go until I realized how horrid it fell into my grand scheme.

If I could would I do the hippie-solution? Yeah but I really don't care either way. I didn't know about it when I first ordered parts and could have given it an effort.

still suck to do. Think I need to rethink this a bit on how to do longer lengths without helper monkeys.

doing longer lengths may be a tad annoying.

This is where legos (yeah, I still have my legos ... what you going to do about it? exactly ... nothin) will come in handy.

i'll have pics soon as I fully construct the rig.

after some monster days at work past few days, only got 2.5ft done. 1/4 of the way there.

SIPPed the 4 feet and the 2 feet.

so that means I only have 13/16 more to go ... damn it.

They only have 1 shitty table saw and no one there knew what a dado blade was. Guess they need to get some employees that actually know what they are selling.

Due to this, it looks like I'll have to long trip to deal with the rents in Yorkville so they can help bring me back a saw, dado blade, and may the wood. Actually, I wonder if I can crank all this out over at their house and bring back pre-cut material. That would be freakin sweet. Guess thanksgiving's long weekend does have some perks other over-eating.

Get some "bonding" time in with my brother and father or whatever ... and yes, my family is very much like the Teutul's from American Choppers on the Discovery Channel.

just ordered the other 5k spindle of wiring.

Figure I can knock out one block of wiring of 16 per night watching TV and eating dinner after work ... Factoring in beer and possible work disruptions and I'm estimating ... I'll be done til next june.

Actually, still aiming for New Years. I figure that weekends will give me the extra couple hours to pull it out. That and possible helper monkeys now that I'll have a 2nd reel of wire hopefully by next Monday.

1.5 feet has been cut, stripped and SIPPed on one side. (168 feet)
4 feet has been cut and stripped (448 feet)

damn it, still under 1000 feet.

The mock floor on large floors does not like to do a full update. I added in two work arounds so this renders properly now. It will only update the UI if it has already completed the update from a pervious attempt. This will make it appear to be a tad more choppy but will cause the UI not to effect the mission critical task AKA the floor.

I also added in a new feature that I believe to be solid ... is the ability to have the application not actually write to the floor via the XML file.

One last major feature to add is a change the animation file randomly based on a timer. I also want this to have a "is done loading" feature on the animation file so there is no down time.

And yes, the winamp plugin would be nice but no doubt won't make it into this new build. Another tool I really would love to make very soon is an animated gif to DDF animation file loader.

I've realized I cannot do simple math now without a calculator ... and they let me graduate college with computer science degree ... suckers.

I also did a quick size reduction after twisting, I found I lose 1 inch for every 1.5 ft. I figure 1 extra foot is good while I was orginally going to do 2.

Due to the twisting length reduction, on the last 4 columns, I'm going to add on an additional 6 inches.

1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, 7, 8.5, 8.5, 9.5, 9.5
-------
87.5 - TOTAL
350 - 4 wires total
1400 - 4 rows per module total
9800 - 7 modules per floor total

This does dictate I need to buy another spindle of wire. damn it.

I rule. Version 2 ... now with Animation file support AND ... a mock module. I think I fixed any outstanding issue. I also added in an interface to custom patterns.

Right before I get my wiring too.
REQUIRED: This requires .Net 2.0
Application
Source Code

Still not 100 happy with the UI but you know ... it gets 'er done. I still really want to get the ability sample the outbound buffer so I can get some phatty plug-in.

WARNING: This was tested under .Net 2.0 beta 2. Not the RTM that was just released.

It just dawned on me I can just rearrange the wires so I can do a direct LED insert. SCORE.

yeah ... I'm dense like that.