I have built a Blinky POV SMT kit and finally got the programming to work after many, many attempts. After doubting my SMT soldering I tested everything as described in the troubleshooting guide. Turned out that even at 100% brightness, my BenQ LED monitor simply did not want to work with BlinkyPOV. Instead I tried my tablet and that worked perfectly… and has done every single time. (It’s also much easier to program using a tablet than a monitor).
Anyway, I have some usability questions.
Before I got the programming to work, I discovered the built in messages and Larson scanner. But after getting programming to work, how can I get back to the built in messages? Everytime I power on it displays the last programmed message and pressing the button does nothing?
When waving the Blinky POV from side to side, often characters appear reversed and it is difficult to read the message. I tried programming messages with different delays but they made no difference. Is there a technique to waving the Blinky POV? A video showing the Blinky POV in action (just like the Blinky Grid) would be useful.
Hello, thanks for the post, and thanks for the datapoint on the BenQ LED monitor not working, that’s good to know.
When you reprogram the kit using the website, it erases all the old messages due to the limited message storage space (256 bytes). Currently we don’t have a way to restore the default messages (aside from re-creating them in the admittedly-clunky website programmer), but we actually just started working on a way to let you re-program the default messages. I’ll post an update here within a week to let you know where we’re at. Pressing the button would normally switch to the next message, but if you only have programmed one message, then it won’t do anything (or possibly restart that message).
Yes, since the Blinky POV doesn’t have any sort of accelerometer sensor, it doesn’t know which way you are waving it, so sometimes the message appears backwards. Once you know which way is the correct way to wave it, you can sort of wave it in a circle, so the other people only see it moving in the correct direction. I know one guy built a spinner for his blinky pov using a couple of pieces of 1/2" pvc pipe, so he could easily spin the blinky in the right direction in a complete circle. We tried to make videos to show the blinky pov in action, but a camcorder doesn’t seem to pick up the POV image as well as we wanted. Maybe cameras have improved in the past few years and I should try again.