My first Arduino shield adds 70 outputs can drive LEDs, motors, etc

[Shakespeare1612]

This was your FIRST project? WOW? How many hours do you have in this thing? Did you not see "blink" in the examples folder? WOW.

[gandrewstone]

@Shakespeare1612 this is blink*70 :-) And you can stack them for the equivalent of hundreds of blink. You can't do that with straight Arduino...

[gandrewstone]

Thanks for the tip! It is a strange name for English speakers to parse.

[BentQuarter]

your saying arduino wrong. its ard-wee-no NOT ar-do-wee-no

[andruha11234]

that is fucking genius!

[mrnobody669]

you are INSANE!!!!! that's awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[speedracerx808]

you mention being able to connect it to the PWM for the arduino, does this mean that all 70 pins become PWM capable? Essentially I wanna make a RGB addressable strip for a project. Similar to your other video with the green led strip. sorry if this isnt that clear. i'm still learning how all this electrical engineering works. thanks

[gandrewstone]

@speedracerx808 Yup. The latest code is capable of PWMing all 70 pins individually at 10000 transitions per second. So you can make RGB colors. Note that an RGB LED requires 3 pins -- one for red, 1 for green, 1 for blue. So one board drives 70/3 RGB LEDs. Also note the latest version of the PCB integrates an Arduino, remote control receiver, ambient light sensor and matrix driver on a single PCB so its a lot cooler.

[speedracerx808]

@gandrewstone awesome! yes i do know that they require multiple pins, and thats why i asked, because a standard arduino didnt have enough PWM pins on a single board for what i wanted. i was looking for a solution to do at least 10 RGB lights with a single arduino. 23 leds are way more that enough for me. so this looks like it will work for me. I look forward to playing around with one soon. thanks :)

[speedracerx808]

@speedracerx808 oh yeah, and where can I buy this? or do i have to make it myself?

[gandrewstone]

@speedracerx808 I haven't put it up on Maker's Market yet because I have limited quantities. But that is normally where you'd find it. talk to me at gandrewstone at hnail.dom (but subtract one from the 1st 2 letters and the 7th -- you know the big search company messaging). Sorry about the obfuscation; it won't let me post otherwise.

[ChrisDragotta]

Nice work. I'm working on a project that will require between 36 and 72 stepper motors (rc plane servos) If you have 70 pins why can't I control 70 motors? You said 17.

CD

[gandrewstone]

Servos and steppers are different beasts tho often used for similar purposes. Steppers require 4 IO lines to drive -- so 17 motors. Steppers need one line but precise timing. You can drive 70 but you probably can't set different pos of all 70 at same time. The CPU does not have the power. But you can sequentially set the pos. Worst case 1.4sec to set all (70*20ms) but a clever program could probably set 5-20 at same time giving maybe 1/4 sec tot since most of the 20ms set time is a delay.

[gandrewstone]

@gandrewstone oops meant "Servos need one line but precise timing"...

[skierplaterandy]

how does the arduino interface with it? serial?

[gandrewstone]

If by serial you mean the UART, no. It uses some of the Arduino's digital IO pins. 1 clock and 2 data (1 for each chip on the board). And with these pins, it does serially clock the bits out to each chip, but does both chips simultaneously.

[skierplaterandy]

i dont quite understand. but dont worry about it. i dont plan on building one. XD 70 outputs are insaine.

[avlewis]

Can't wait to start playing ;-)

[amando96]

true...

[wyomingjustin]

Wow. Nice work.

[amando96]

you should use jumpers to short what you want...

[gwylimWilliams]

Nice work :D

I just started playing with an Arduino myself, they are lovely.