Hardware update

Post date: Feb 11, 2015 1:25:20 AM

I noticed that when I moved a wire, the whole cube dimmed. It turns out that the small solderless breadboard I was using to route the jumper wires has a huge resistance, and when I moved the wires farther apart across the board, there was even more resistance. To solve this, I soldered the wires to a solderable breadboard, and I took the opportunity to add some functionality. I added a plug to attach the power supply, a fuse for safety, and a switch to select the power source, either usb from my computer or the external power supply. Because the power supply has a slightly larger voltage than usb from my computer, the switch prevents current from flowing back into my computer, which would lead to bad things. I also added four indicator lights. A white one that is programmable, and a red, green, and blue light to indicate the amount of current flowing to those parts of the cube. I made these by winding magnet wire around screws and sensing the magnetic field created with a hall effect sensor. To keep the coils cool so that their resistance remains low, I mounted a fan above them. Lastly, I connected an original PlayStation controller to the board so that I have the ability to interact with animations through a gamepad. This site helped me figure out how to do this.

Below are pictures of the updated board. In the second picture, the wires at the bottom go to pins on the microcontroller. The fuse, switch, and power plug can be seen in the bottom right corner. The wires for the control boards and PSX controller can be found in the top right corner. The rest of the board includes the four indicator lights, fan, coils, and hall effect sensors.

-Jeremy