Any wood stock I have I've cut. I need to get some 2x4's, plywood, and a few more of the 3 footers and I should be ready to go.

I do however have to add in a run for the wiring ... yeah, umm, time to bust out Mr. Router (picture coming soon to a store near you)

I measured out the 2 footers so friday I can cut. I planning on doing this tomorrow but what I was going to do on friday got put on for tomorrow so .... yeah .... that wins over this.

I'm still a bit short on the wood but I believe I can build out the actual floor itself and leave the area where my couch is alone until I get some more 3 footers. I still need to buy some 2x4's and plywood too. Do that saturday during the day. Wonder if they'll let me on the bus with those. Really should map out my floor to see how many I need to buy.

Help?
Anyone know structurally how close the 2x4's for a floor need to be together? Every 6 inches? And is 3/8" plywood going to be thick enough? Remember, I'm a programmer, not a carpenter. I know there are rules for this type of stuff. If someone knows, please inform.

After hanging out with McNelis, I managed to cut all 3 foot lengths that I currently have.

Now to the 2 footers and actually laying some stuff out. No matter what I still need to cut the wire guides so the 3 footers aren't totally finished yet. Give me a chance to bust out my router. I have pictures I took but eh, nothing really all that spectacular.

I'm rather shocked at my progress I made in about 1.5 hours worth of work.

Since now I'm jealous of what Dave at the disco bar managed to pull off, I think I'm going to have to get off my ass and stop playing xbox 360.

I think I can build out the floor by this weekend if I hustle and flow all this week. I won't have the entire living floor raised but the disco floor area should be. I think I can get the wiring run and what not too. Doubt I'll be able to do anything Friday and Saturday on it. I have to bribe my buddy Dave over at Various rumblings from a Dink to help me get some 2x4's and some plywood for the rest of the floor to make it drunk proof. I also need some USB hubs. Must not be out done by Wisconsin.

For those that are new here, let me recap what my project is. I started this project way back in I believe July. I made a few expensive mistakes here and there but I think it is all coming together now. I am running a floor that is 7 boards total (448 RGB LED's total ) with 2 miles worth of hand rolled wiring (mistake). I have 3/8" polycarbonate for the actual floor. Polycarbonate is a part of bulletproof glass (aka cow proof). My end floor will be 8 feet wide by 14 feet and 6 inch tiles.

The software I run I custom wrote based off the orginal C code from MIT. It runs off .Net 2.0 and soon to have some DirectX 9.0c added in. It can handle floor configurations of any size and uses and XML configuration file to specify the needed aspects. It can play animated gifs and jpegs on top of the ddf images. I extended out the ddf format a bit to be able to handle custom ddf sizes. Parts of the code could be better but that is why I have the source out there.

Dave over at the Disco Bar just finished up his bar.

I have to say, I'm really impressed with how his turned out. AND I SAW PONG. Why don't I have that animation file. And some really weird cool square burst animation too. Dude, hook a brotha up.

I just got about 90% of the wood I need to build the floor. I do not have the wood I need to raise it up however. That is coming soon. I still need to cut the wood. Now to use the term wood because I can ... wood.

Been too busy playing ghost recon too. damn rebels and terrorists making me save the world ... again. I like the game but I think it is a bit too hard. Two hits and you're dead. I loved Ninja Gaiden and that was one of the hardest games I've played but this is just annoying. I wish some of the aiming would be faster. Come on Ninja Gaiden for 360. And my buddy brad over at my old company found out that I'm not just all talk in Halo 2 after schooling him 5 times (show boating cost me a game even though him and his friend started to do an allie BS crap where they only shot at me) and not playing Halo 2 in a solid 6 months. It is like riding a bike just shooting aliens.

not dead, just busy and tired. I'm going hit up home depot / menards Saturday or Sunday for some wood.

Also my new video game, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, isn't making life any easier. I will say when a building in front of me blew up, scared the f out of me. Killing terrorists and blowing stuff up. God I love my xbox 360. Thank god I got it back and working now. Not having a DVD player sucked.

James Edwards asks:

Hey Clint--

I'm building a bar top similar to all the dancefloors and the discobar... I want to use your software at some point but I'm having trouble figuring out where / how to input the size of my floor. I am currently finishing two boards for 128 LEDs -- our table will be 8x16 cells. Further, I am unsure about how to wire the LEDs in order to get the correct effect, meaning, how should I connect the board to the leds, in 8x8 patterns next to each other, 16x2 patterns on top of each other etc. I know this is more of a software issue, as the LEDs can be controlled however you program them. Finally, how can I add more patterns? I like the mock floor you have included in your software. Is that a direct rip of the pattern program or is that a simulated version of the pattern? I guess what I mean is, if I were to program my own pattern, would I be able to see it on the mock floor before I complete the floor.

Thanks for any assistance you can give me,

You can either do a 4x16 or 8x8 for your tiles. My software can handle either. As for wiring, should be able to wire it in order. It views each chunk of image as part of a board. The software views boards as lego blocks more or less. The ordering for wiring goes from upper left to lower right per module.

Any ddf / image files found in the "Animation Directory" node will show up. To add more, just put more files in there. I believe you'll need to restart the application for the new files to show up. I'm going to redo the interface shortly since I keep on adding in more and more stuff here.

The mock floor is a virtual representation of what should be showing on the floor at that point in time. It is a low priority since the floor is more important than a computer screen. The software can be run without being hooked up to a floor if you set "DisableComPortWrite" to true.

The XML configuration file should be something like (please note this configuration WILL NOT write to the boards).

Think I answered everything.
- clint

<ddf>
   <configuration>
      <animationdirectory>C:\disco\animation</animationdirectory>
      <disablecomportwrite>true</disablecomportwrite>
      <baudrate>57600</baudrate>
      <tilesperrow>8</tilesperrow>
      <rowspermodule>8</rowspermodule>
      <comports>
         <comport>COM4</comport>
         <comport>COM5</comport>
      </comports>
   </configuration>
</ddf>

I got nailed with a damn cold and it took me out hard on Wednesday. I got the wood cut and on Friday for work I got to do hit up a job fair at Loyola University for my company, SpringCM, content management on demand, to help find some kids that are willing to learn and work hard. God, I was there only two years ago ... scary.

HOWEVER, I did get something done in the morning before we got hit up left and right by doe-eyed kids looking for jobs. I got the spectrum analyzer working. The alignment is off but still ... it is progress.

I still need to sand the slots. Maybe I'll do that right now ... or maybe when I feel like actually doing something other than using my laptop for mine sweeper.

the post below shows you what I did on sunday but on saturday, I managed to mark up all 54 peices of wood to be cut. Chances are I won't be able to even start on cutting until Wednesday however.

I still need more wood too.

I went to the Chicago southside irish parade on Sunday and realized a few things.

1. The southside is a black hole of incoming calls. You can make outgoing, just no one gets them if they are also in the southside.
2. Cops drink with open containers much like the rest of the crowd.
3. There is are no bathrooms there
4. My friends can actually force me to go somewhere
5. Eating the little ceasers guy is actually funny
   
6. My friend's ass is actually that big
   
7. this is the face you make after leaving a portapotty after a parade
8. and this is me realizing how far I'm from home
   

did a quick check and only 2 need to be trimmed to 3 foot and only one needs to be cut down to a 2 footer.

I got 54 more 3 footers from Home Depot last night. Yes, I bought them out. Yes it felt good.

That brings me to about half the 3 foot wood lengths I'm going to need. A problem I do see with some of them is they vary in height slightly by about a centimeter so some may need to be scrapped / made into 2 foot peices.

How-To: Make a surface mount soldering iron

over the weekend my xbox 360 died on me. I cried. Thank god I RMA'ed it. Now i don't have an DVD player. damn you microsoft and my inability to feel like hooking up my orginal xbox.

I found a weird thing out with DirectSound and decided to recode how I'm doing the Spectrum Analyzer. It didn't want to work if it wasn't running outside visual studio.

I also want to recode the user interface at some point to make it a bit more dynamic for 2 new things I want to add in / fix 2 existing cross threading issues.

3 foot by 3 foot, 10 peices of wood total. 20 dollars for the wood. 1/4" thick.

I also got a Dermel 400xr to further turn wood into my bitch. GET WHAT YOU OWE WOOD.

Now I just need to start buying out the Menards / Home Depots out of 1/4"x4x whatever size wood. hehe, I said wood.

Heavy duty Jig Saw DW331K ... when I buy toys, I buy the best. Cost about $160.00. Also got some additional blades, a very nice square, and some saftey glasses.

2 peices of 1/4" thick supported 150 pounds of light ass nerd with success.

Dave over at the Disco Bar, has some new videos. He switches to doing 2 8x8 modules but looks like one of his boards is DOA.

He hooked me up with his cool red fade animation which I've been meaning to look at.

URL 1 (http://www.betterthaneveryone.com/)
http://del.icio.us/url/aefe3d1681fff04ebc1337e112c3bf0e

URL 2 (http://betterthaneveryone.com/)
http://del.icio.us/url/9e5f2624141fd8c194f16c727508c8fe

Thank the gods, I'm done soldering, I soldered 30 extra LEDs just in case. Just leaves building the actual floor itself.

And now ... picture time.

This type.