Got my kit, having fun, questions

MiniPOV4 and previous versions

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sparr
 
Posts: 196
Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:21 pm

Got my kit, having fun, questions

Post by sparr »

So, after stupidly ordering on a holiday, I got my kit last night. Put together my USBtinyISP (goodbye STK500, hello free desk space!) for other purposes first, then got my MiniPOV3 assembled. The fourth thing I have ever soldered, it turned out OK. Worked on the first try, modified one of the stock firmwares with some different text and uploaded it. Now, on to the questions (some of which may come across in a negative way, while I am really just curious).

Why does it call for 47 or 100 ohm resistors? My kit came with 100s, but I did a double-take when the assembly instructions called for 47s, mostly due to my still-growing comfort with reading resistor values. Why not always 47 or always 100? I am going to drop a 47 (or 68) in place of one of the 100s to see if the brightness increase is noticeable, if so then I might swap them all out.

On the topic of resistors, what are the benefits of 8 separate resistors vs a DIP16 resistor network?

Some kits I have seen have stress relief for the power connection. For this kit I ran the wires through the corner holes and tied a knot in them on top of the vias. Other than a blob of hot glue, is there a typical good way to relieve joint stress in a situation like this?

The code indicates that binary constants are not always supported, and goes on to use some long macros to duplicate that functionality. What compiler does not support BANNED format constants?

This issue came up. I know that most uses of a POV device like this won't really care about even a 10% inaccuracy in the delay, but it still bugs me.

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: Got my kit, having fun, questions

Post by adafruit »

the resistors are modified depending on what LEDs I get in stock
having seperate resistors instead of a pack is cheaper and allows for more modding & hacking
knotting into the hole in the corner is probably the best way to strain relieve
its not clear why some compiler versions dont like 0b but its been a issue so now we just use a macro

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