Forum › Your Builds › Took a while…

Viewing 3 reply threads
  • Author
    Posts
    • May 20, 2025 at 1:14 pm #9447
      MartinK

        Hi there

        Not sure whether there is still anyone here… 🙂
        It took me far too long to finally have enough time to do this.
        But building it has given me a lot of pleasure in the last couple of days.

        By the way… there seem to be not enough pins on the motherboard in order to support all functionalities of all the other boards (guess it is also mentioned in another thread somewhere). Is there any way to reduce the number of pins needed?

        For example, is it possible to connect the OE of Digitiser and RGB Matrix to the same pin on the motherboard?

        Or is it possible to chain the shift registers of Digitiser and RGB Matrix together?

      • May 21, 2025 at 5:13 pm #9448
        Martyn

          Hello! I’m still here 🙂

          I’m happy you enjoyed the experience! I often wonder how many kits are still in drawers, yet to be built! It looks like you’ve done a very neat job of it, bravo!

          There was always a tradeoff to get all things functional at the same time. But to answer your question, yes, you can use 1 pin for both OE pins. And to answer your other question: Yes, you can also chain the RGB Matrix with the Digitiser (using Qh’ on one to connect to SER on the next) to save on more IO. It would be a little more complicated to code, but it’s definitely possible.

          Let me know if you need more details. I am very rusty as I haven’t coded for my kits in a few years, but I’m sure I can help nonetheless.

          Kind regards,

          Martyn

        • May 21, 2025 at 6:04 pm #9449
          Martyn

            In fact, this sketch I wrote uses all 4 boards:

            https://github.com/ShortCircuitsUK/CodeExamples/blob/main/Devices/Sensor_Graph_Alarm_Clock.ino

            It doesn’t use the SD card, but it only uses 13 out of 18 pins. So it should be easy enough to add the SD card code to it.

            Here is a connection diagram that should support all functionality. The switches are connected to the pins that serve the RTC, so as long as you aren’t pressing the buttons when the RTC is being accessed, it should work…

            4-Board Connection Diagram

          • May 30, 2025 at 5:03 pm #9450
            MartinK

              Thanks for the hints! 🙂

              My pin arrangement now looks like this:

              Additionally, Qh’ from RGB is connected to SER of DIGITISER.

              For now, I’ve only tried it with a small sketch using the RGB matrix and DIGITISER, which works well.

              To be continued…

          • Author
            Posts
          Viewing 3 reply threads
          • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.