I just purchased a Blinky V1.08 from Princess Auto. (new old stock maybe??)
The unit appears to work, the demo plays, but when I attempt to program the unit the programming Never Ends.
(ie: it finishes on the website, but the unit waits for more data)
I have tried different monitors, brightness, etc.
No luck.
The lights blink, seldom do I get Checksum errors.
I verified all solder joints, and positions of the C/D sensors.
The lights blink when I receive data…
Any suggestions? If it requires new firmware. I have an EMP10 eprom burner that should program the controller.
Hey there, sorry your kit is misbehaving. The Mintronics blinky kits were originally sold to Microcenter and Radio Shack, so maybe Princess Auto picked them up for cheap during the Radio Shack firesale? There is no new firmware, but I’m sure we’ll be able to get it working for you.
Brightness needs to be at 100% for any device, since some displays use a high-speed switching to reduce the brightness that totally messes up the blinky programming process.
Take a look at the animated programming guide:
What is the first step where your Blinky kit differs in behavior from the guide? In step 7, does the second LED flash regularly as the on-screen squares flash? In general, if the led doesn’t flash regularly during programming, then that indicates an issue with reliable data reception by the clock sensor. If you get regular led flashed during programming but checksum errors at the end, that indicates an issue with the data sensor.
Please give it a try with a really long delay value like 500, and see if it works then.
Please attach a photo of the top and bottom sides of your kit if you can. Let me know if the forum prevents you from uploading images.
I have a CRT monitor (huge sony Trinitron … old school bug bucks monitor) I am using (full brightness, various contrast levels tested)
The demo works that’s built in
The programming appears to work fine.
The 2nd led blinks as the download works.
but it never finishes…
So when the end of the download (website) finishes… the Blinky is waiting for more data… I get to step #7… but it never finishes.
Interesting when downloading… led’s 3-8 appear dim… 1/4 bright.
LED 1 is blinking fine. LED 2 is off 100%, and the other 6 leds are dim. (is this normal?)
(and yeah… I bet Princess auto got if from the RS fire sale… there was LOADS of USA radio shack stuff on the shelf… )
Cool, a nice old CRT should work just fine. Is LED 1 or LED 2 flashing during the downloading/programming (while the website squares are flashing)?
If you have a multimeter, there’s a pretty easy sensor troubleshooing process: On the programming website, set the delay to 3000, which will make it wait 3 seconds between clock changes (gives your multimeter time to autorange if needed). Then set the kit into programming mode (hold button down while you power it up). Point one sensor at the clock square, and click Go. Measure the DC voltage between ground and the + side of the sensor. You should see a lower voltage (less than 1.0 volts) when the square is black, and a higher voltage (hopefully higher than 2 volts) when the square is white. Let me know what voltages you measure when the sensor is pointed at black and white squares. The blinky chip measures these voltages and uses their difference to know if the website is transmitting a 0 bit or a 1 bit. If there’s not much difference, then your sensor isn’t working right and won’t be able to help with the programming. Test both sensors, but I would guess that your clock sensor is the faulty one, since the programming process never finishes (not getting a checksum).
Makes sense that you can’t have another light shining on the blinky kit. It’s trying to detect the difference between the black and white squares on the screen, so another light shining on the sensors might wash-out the difference. I should have said “try in a darkened room” as one of the first troubleshooting steps.
The font we used is the standard “character LCD” font, which is 7 pixels tall, but the Blinky kits are 8 pixels tall. We tried to redesign the standard font into 8 pixels tall, but we couldn’t get it to look nice. So for text-based messages, the 8th LED won’t light-up because it’s not part of any character. If you design a pixel-based message, then you can use all 8 LEDs.
I thought it might be something like that, with 7 pixel characters.
I have been trying to get it to show a simple message - BIKE - but can’t find a good playback rate so it shows well. Any suggestions?
The playback rate determines the amount of time the device waits between displaying each “column” of LEDs for the message.
A shorter delay will squish-together the columns and will work best when you can move the POV quickly, like if you put it on a spinning bicycle wheel or something like that.
A longer delay will make each column wider (so each pixel looks more like a horizontal bar when moved. This works better if you are moving the POV more slowly.
That being said, the most critical aspect is that our eyes’ POV effect works best when the object is moving quickly and flashing quickly, and there is good contrast between the LEDs and the background, so I would first focus on finding a darker location where you can wave the POV around. It seems to work better if someone else is waving the POV, to put more distance between you and the LEDs (it’s pretty difficult to get a good view of the LEDs when you’re waving it yourself, unless you use a mirror).
