Why TTL? Go analog for something like this, colour fading is awesome
Hi Things, Kiz,
Each colour is controlled by a TTL PWM signal so I'll be able to fade each diode. Not as good as analogue, but still should look great. The PWM can have 255 steps on each chanel, but I recon the driver will top out or bottom out well before this, so even if I get only 32 steps per chanel its 32k colours or even 8 visible brightnes steps per channel will be 512 colours.
I can change the PWM freqency in the processor quite easily and I hope to get the driver to work at 2KHz + so the beam shouldn't look flickery or broken as the laser is 'wafted' about
I've programmed a function to fade through the range on each of the RGB, so it will fade through reds, oranges greens pink, purples etc. In that function the left right joystick controlls the speed of the fade, so with a stationary beam, its best to have a very slow fade, but moving the beam quickly best to have a fast fade.
One of the aims is to be able to sweep the pointer overhead and get a "vertical nightime rainbow":drool:
There are a few other ideas for cool functions that can be added a bit later once its up and running.
Sander, I don't know how many hrs, but i recon the LCD cover took at least 5 hrs to program and 5 hrs to machine by the time I made the fixture and got everything setup.
The key switch cover took alot longer as it was a bit of a learning curve.
From the original concept to date, the total has got to be hundreds of hrs.
I have made some duplicate parts , just in case I mess up or if anyone wants one. But I have to get the first one working before offering to build any others. To early to give a cost as i dont have it finished, the optics to get the red and blue beam correction could be expeni:cryyy:
Going to bug my brother this week to get the battery tube components finished. I'll post a photo of the body all assembled as soon as those parts are done.
1st post added a drawing of the whole thing assembled to show the size.
Head dia 48.5mm
Battery tube 35mm (using 26650's)
Overall length 266mm
ATB
MM