This assignment was nonessential to my final project so I decided to try different methods to create artistic pieces - the first idea was to create a charlieplexed LED grid that could light up etched acrylic sheets to illuminate them and make them appear like slices of a 3D object. The other idea was to create a kinetic sculpture like Ganson's work (I think it was on display at the MIT museum a few years ago - theyre amazing!) This sculpture would be driven by a motor and operate pretty simply.
I made 2 boards for the assignment - one was the charlieplexed board and the other the motor driver with an H bridge. For the charlieplexed board I soldered on 2 wires (one for power, one for ground) and used those to connect to the regulator as a power source since the aligator clips made contact with other pins and weren't small enough. This way, I could fine tune the amount of power the board was getting. Both boards I was able to produce the boards pretty easily but I had many problems when I was trying to flash both of them. I constantly got an "rc=-1" error when I tried to flash them so I decided to check the traces with a multimeter. I did not have a short between power and ground but the boards were both consuming a lot of power - I tried to remill the dc motor again with success! I also redesigned the board with an LED but have yet to mill it... will update this later in the term. (I was out of town for most of this week).
