you built what !?

[shnatko]

you built what !? turned 3 today!

[shnatko]

Hello shnatko,I have a few questions regarding the manual wire pin/port connections from the Arduino to the LED pcb and Mux pcb: ***I am using the Arduino Mega 2560***. (1) What pins on the arduino are used and where are they connected to on the LED pcb?(2) What are the physical wire connections between the pins on the LED pcb.(3) What pins on the arduino are used and where are they connected to on the MUX pcb?

Hello,

 The arduino has 4 main control ouptuts to the LED control board: latch, clock, data_in, and clear.  Those 4 pins connect to the first LED control board in the daisy chain.The details of how the LED control boards are wired to the panel can be found mostly in this post.https://shnatko.tumblr.com/post/122307677670/can-you-put-together-a-wiring-detail-of-the-panel

Regarding the mux board, the arduino drives the mux enable and control select lines and the mux boards output the mux readings back to analog input pins on the arduino.

[shnatko]

Does the power supply use a 3-prong plug or 2-prong?

The power supply has 3 input pins for the 120V input, Line in, neutral, and ground.

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/2104946.pdf

[shnatko]

Analog mux 2:1: 2x 74HC4053 triple 2:1 analog multiplexer IC - the link to this is a pdf instead where you purchase it can you tell me. this project is great thanks for sharing

I had purchased them off of digikey.  I believe this is the device.http://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=296-9219-5-ND

[shnatko]

Hi, we are doing a similar project, and were wondering what material you used on top of the LED table? We're not sure what to use because clear plastics/glass reflect IR light, which wouldn't allow us to use IR emitters/receivers.

  Hey,

   The glass I used was clear tempered glass and also low iron ( which is less green tinted than standard clear glass ).  The IR LEDs / sensors are not very far in the infrared range that transmission through the glass is hampered as far as I can tell.  If the glass is too thick / tinted however it is possible there could be issues, I’m not sure.

thanks!

[shnatko]

Can you please provide full code for this amazing coffee table ?Thanking in advance.

http://shnatko.tumblr.com/post/116608951545/code-breakdown-pt-1-in-the-next-few-posts-id

The code has been made available in a previous post above.

[shnatko]

Hi I would like to develop proximity led coffee table for my final year project. But I have a lot of questions for making. If possible can you send me the instructions to my email hostgatorpromotionatgmaildotcom. Thanks

Hello, I do not have a set of instructions I can send you. I tried to document the major sections of the project in detail in various blog posts. If you have specific questions do not hesitate to ask. I can answer them or point you to the relevant post. thanks!

[shnatko]

hello i"m Don from the netherlands and i have seen your video 10 times now from the rgb led table ,and i though i want to build the same table as you. with all the ir leds the interactive table but i don't no what i need for this. do you have a list from all the parts that i need and a drawing for to build 1 table (i Hope so) including the control boards. then i can order the parts. i hope that you will help me build this amazing table.... i hope hearing you soon thanks and greets Don

Hello, I have a breakdown of the parts I used to build the table here: 

http://shnatko.tumblr.com/post/121756881235/led-table-parts-list

The list includes links to where I had ordered the parts from as well.  Many of the details of the build can be found in the blog but if you have a specific question, I can either answer it directly or point you to the appropriate post :) thanks!

[shnatko]

Hello Shnatko, I am really interested in trying out your entire interactive table project. Am I able to contact you through email ? I have a lot of queries to ask you as I am not well versed with all the micoprocessors. Hope you hear from you soon

Send me your email address in a private message if you would like to e-mail me.

[shnatko]

Thank you for explaining the LED wiring configuration, Could you perhaps explain the phototransistor and IR LED wiring in the same manor? I would appreciate it. Everything you have done is amazing!

There are 8 rows of photo transistors on the table. Each row contains 16 photo transistors.  Each photo transistor is wired with its collector pin soldered to a 5V bus wire and the emitter pin connected as an output to the ribbon cable which will carry the sensed voltage over to the analog mux PCB and eventually to the Arduino.  Here you can see the wiring for part of a row of photo transistors.

The IR LEDs are simpler because they just need to be powered on or off.  Each row if IR LEDs consists of 16 LEDs.  The row consists of 5 x 3 LEDs connected in series between a 5V bus wire and a ground wire plus a current limiting resistor.  The last LED in the row is wired on its own with a separate limiting resistor.  The circuit for 1 row basically looks like this ( actual resistor values may be different ).  There are 7 such rows on the table, one between each row of photo transistors.

[shnatko]

Hi shnatko I would like to use single coloured LED instead of RGB ones. Do I have to change the circuit boards? What are the things that needs to be changed?

The circuit boards can be used with single color LEDs.  The only change hardware-wise would be to use all 3 column current sink ICs for the single color LEDs.  Meaning that rather than the LED controller boards being able to drive up to an 8x8 RGB array, it could drive an 8x24 single-color array.

On the software side there would be many changes needed.  Instead of 3 possible LED colors with 8 degrees of brightness you’d only be dealing with 1.  The interrupt routine to drive the LED control boards from the Arduino would need to be updated to remove 2 of the 3 LED brightness calculations.  Any of the animations that blend multiple colors together would need to be changed.  It could be done, but it would take some work on the software side.

[shnatko]

Hey man, at the moment I just really confused on how to soldier each of the rgb for each of the rows. Does each row get one whole wire for all of the reds, all of the greens and all of the blues or is it split up? Many Thanks Zac

The RGB LED has 4 leads on it; a single anode pin that is common to all 3 colors (hence common anode LED), and 3 individual cathode pins, one for red, one for green, and one for blue.

The row wire supplies the electrical current to the LED and the column wires sink the current for a particular color.  So the row wire attaches to the anode pin for each RGB LED in the row.  In my 16x32 setup I have 16 row wires and each row wire is soldered to 32 anode pins, one for each RGB LED in the row.

There are 3 column wires FOR EACH RGB RGB LED, one for each color.  So we end up with 96 column wires ( 32 red, 32 green, and 32 blue ).  A column wire is connected to each of the corresponding cathode pins in a column.  So for example, the red column wire for the first column would connect to all 16 red cathode pins in that column.  A single red LED for example is activated by turning on the row that LED is in, and also activating the corresponding column that LED is in.

In this image, you can see a few of the LED row wires and how each RGB LED in the row has 1 pin ( anode ) connected to the row wire.

Here you can see an individual RGB LED with its cathode pins also connected to column wires. From left to right the pins are cathode ( connected to vertical column wire ), anode pins ( connected to horizontal row wire ) and then 2 more cathode pins connected to column wires.

You can see that I needed to bend the RGB LED leads at different heights because I had row wires crossing column wires.  The row/column wires can not touch one another otherwise you will have problems ( a whole column will turn on if a row wire touches a column wire rather than just the LED in that row ).

My suggestion would be to build a smaller prototype first to get comfortable with how you want to wire up the rows/columns before you try to do a full size panel.  Make sure you know how you’re going to wire it before you do the full size build.

[shnatko]

How long does this project take? i got only 20 days left of school and need to start it soon.

A small version of the panel could be made in that time perhaps but building the full 16x32 panel with RGB LEDs and the IR sensing was VERY time consuming.  The 512 RGB LEDs alone required over 2000 solder connections.  It took me weeks to get the panel assembled.  Granted the time also included a lot of figuring out of how things were going to be done and I wasn’t working on a deadline other than giving my wife back our dining room table. :)

With your deadline, I would suggesting going with a smaller panel size ( 8x8 or 16x16 ) and perhaps not building in the IR sensing to simplify the panel.  There would be some code modification needed as well if working with a smaller panel.  If you plan on using the board designs I made available you would need to get them and the components for the ASAP as it may take time to get them built / assembled as well.

[shnatko]

If I didn't want to put the IR sensors in how much would I have to change?

If you are not using the IR sensors, you would not build the IR LEDs / photo transistors onto the panel.  This would make wiring the panel easier.

It would also eliminate 2 of the mux boards from the table as they would no longer be needed.  So simpler hardware.

On the software side, you can remove/disable the interrupt that handles cycling through all the mux inputs and polling the analog input pins to the Arduino.  You could also scrub the code to remove all the variable declared to use the IR array if you were interested in cutting back on RAM use.

In short there are not many changes one would need to make to have a panel w/o the IR array.

[shnatko]

Is there a full parts list for creating the circuit board? I want to try building the circuit boards required.

I do have a full parts list here:

http://shnatko.tumblr.com/post/121756881235/led-table-parts-list

You would need to get the boards manufactured as well.  Details on obtaining the board files can be found here:

http://shnatko.tumblr.com/post/137930961615/led-table-design-files

[shnatko]

I am really interested into making one of these interactive LED tables for a school project. Roughly how many circuit boards does it require to run and how many boards do you have available?

The full 16x32 RGB table would require 4 of the LED driver boards to run.  If you ran with single color LEDs rather than RGB you could run up to a 16x48 panel on just 2 boards.

To include the 128 IR sensing nodes would require 2 of the analog multiplexer boards.   So the full table is 6 boards in total. I currently have 2 fully populated LED driver boards available.  I also have a few unpopulated PCBs which, if one bought all the components, could build additional driver/mux boards with.

[shnatko]

Also with the 0.1uF Capacitors are those (0.1uf 50v Radial Electrolytic Capacitors) these ones cause I'm getting a company to assembly my boards and they aren't sure which capacitors to use

The 0.1 uF caps are just standard ceramic disc capacitors ( non-electrolytic ).

So you are having someone assemble the boards for you?  I’d love to see pics of your progress!