Tag Archives: electronics

It Shouldn’t Be This Easy

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I ordered 4 Mighty Mini’s from the recent group buy which came early, and went fast. The first time I participated in a group buy was definitely a positive one. I can say Seth Dunn “dunnsr” on DoItYourselfChristmas.com is quick! This buy recently closed and I already have my stuff! I am pleased with the turn-around time on this one. Good thing, because I feel like I’m behind with hardware, and it’s only March.

For those of you that don’t know what “Mighty Minis” are, they are RGB+W (Red/Green/Blue plus White) flood lights using 8mm LEDs. They are controllable on a per color basis and are driven by 24V DC at around 200ma per channel (color) when using 1/2 watt LEDs and 600ma per channel when using 1 watt LEDs. They create neat effects when shone upon a house, or tree in sequence with the rest of the show. Here’s a quick demo video that the creator uploaded a couple years ago:

The PCB was designed to go in a certain “Cooper” brand floodlight that can be had for about $15 at Lowe’s, but I couldn’t pass up a deal somebody mentioned about a month ago on DIYC. Home Depot had cheap “Workforce” 500 watt flood lights for five dollars and change on clearance. Tiffany went to our local Home Depot, which didn’t have any, but had somebody call a few. Just a few miles a way in Escondido, we were able to snag some.

I started disassembly of the flood last night and did some fitting today for a “holder”. Now, the part that shouldn’t be this easy: I wanted to use things I had in the garage already to make a holder/stand-off for the PCB. I hit the parts bin and found that with 2 small angle-brackets, 2 15/64 extruded plastic plugs, and 4 #6-1/2″ sheet metal screws I was able to get something working. I used the lamp holder bracket that came in the flood, and the parts I mentioned which will suspend the PCB inside the enclosure perfectly. It’s almost as if everything were designed for the pieces I have.

My only concern with the holder is the extruded plastic plugs. I have read that the “Mighty Mini” produces quite a bit of heat, so I will do some testing to make sure the extruded plastic plugs can deal with the heat. If need be, I will spend a little more time/money making something better that can withstand more heat.

Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here’s a few pictures I took in the garage of the floods, bracket/stand-off design, and Bare PCB.

Flood Light

Progress

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Tuesday night I was able to get started on soldering the Renard boardsw are starting with. I have two 24 channel boards giving us 48 total channels for now. I hope to buy at least one 64 channel controller with a group purchase between now and Christmas 2011. For now, here are a couple of pictures of the start.

Started Soldering Renard SS24 Renard SS24 Close Up Renard SS24 Bottom

Since I’ve never soldered PCBs before, this was a new task. I already have a really nice soldering iron, but I bought a fine point tip, and some fine solder for this work. I actually found it much easier than I thought it would be. The fine tip, and accurate temperature control made it relatively easy. For now, I don’t have a PCB holder, so I would either put the board on my lap, my work bench, or clamp it with the alligator type clamps depending on where I was working on the board.

In about 3 hours I have all resistors, diodes, LEDs, caps, fuse holders, and IC sockets soldered to the board. I think all I have left are the triacs, RJ45, DB9 connectors, and the screw terminals. I should be able to complete those with another hour of work, then I can start tinkering with the software side of things. I will need to program the PIC microcontrollers, get some “tests” going with Vixen on a windows machine. Then I will start looking at the rs485 protocol and my own software to sequence/control the show. I don’t like the fact that vixen requires windows and hope I can easily “record” the output and convert to something I can plop into eeprom on an arduino or similar MCU.

For now, I’m just excited to actually have hardware ready to play with. I will probably get a little “test” setup in the garage so I can visually see lights blinking and flashing. I spend a lot of time reading, learning, etc. on DIYC where I heard this gem: “It’s not a hobby. It’s an obsession. It is only a hobby for 6 months.” We’ll see if we make it past the hobby stage, stay tuned!