While the idea is still promising there were quite a few road bumps this week. Shipping took a week end a half which diminished the time I have to get it working as i think most of us experienced. Once I got the electronics it was quite promising. Once The LED board was connected to the Pixelblaze controller, which shipped with a 3 wire cable instead of 4, was connected properly I started to test how fast it could update. Running 1 trig function for each LED update it was able to update the entire board at 2000+ FPS to my surprise. Something untested that might be an issue, as Brian brought up in class, is how long will the little CR2032 button mattery I’m using power the system? Running the controller at 20Mhz with 64 LEDs might draw a significant current. This will probably be in next weeks post, hopefully not though.

For spinning the Electronics and LEDs I planned to use a tiny cheap brushless motor I bought in combination with a single ESC, Lipo battery, BEC, and Esp32 to control the speed. When I went to solder I changed the plan a bit.

To test the motor I decided to use the electronics out of my combat robot which I know are functional. I realized that this motor probably would appreciate the overvoltage I would be giving it in combination with the load. It also didn’t come with mounting screws… New plan: The electronics for spinning will be temporarily borrowed from my 3lb combat robot. Is it overkill? Yes, 100%. Will it work? Also yes.

Using these electronics has the side affect of having a controller to vary RPM which is both good and bad. I will probably run it at the lowest speed this motor can run at a consistent speed at (5% throttle…) and hope nothing bumps the controller. Faster spinning, at least i its current form, may cause spontaneous disassembly.

The biggest challenge i have yet to mention or fully encounter is how i will store the data to be displayed. I will probably set certain angle intervals at which it should render at and store the data in either a 3D array or a list (hashmap if it runs to slowly). Animations may be difficult do to storage limitations so snake might be the only animated part.