Jan 07 2009
Peggy 2.0 Soldering Complete
Evelyn finished up the Peggy yesterday. All 625 LEDs are in and soldered — that’s 1250 solder joints.
The method of gluing them to the board with the construction adhesive worked out pretty well. Here’s Evelyn checking on the final board.
All of those LEDs are really remarkably heavy. We’re going to have to mount the PCB to a piece of wood, otherwise it risks flexing too much and cracking. That’s okay, though, since we were planning on mounting it under a glass-topped table, and having the wood will make it easier to mount.
Next up, programming all those LEDs.
2 Responses to “Peggy 2.0 Soldering Complete”
hi how did table work out hope you got the look you wanted i woud like to pike your brains i to plan to make a table and have leds as a light sorce but 2 and a harf foot by 1 and a harf and not flashing is it posible to mount the boards side by side and do i need to use the hole board or can i just out lay my desin out line and fill in with leds i hope you can advise me thanks daz
We haven’t yet finished the table, but it should go together pretty easily. The Peggy will be mounted to a piece of wood (painted black) and then attached to the underside (under the glass top). The table is made of wood, and has lots of space, so attaching it should be easy.
The Peggy 2.0 boards are 15 inches high and 11.5 inches wide. They can be mounted side by side (across the 11.5 inch section) without any gaps.
Keep in mind that the bottom 3.25 inches of the board (across the 15 inch section) is where the electronics and batteries are. So, you lose that space. For our table, we will be mounting the board so that the LEDs are centered but the board is not. I’ll take some photos so you can see.
You do not need to use the whole board. You can lay out your design and put LEDs wherever you want. It’s just like the old Lite Brite toy. Remember that the LEDs get soldered to the board, so moving them around (making big changes) is not easy–you’d need to desolder them.
The power of the Peggy 2.0 is that you can control individual LEDs. This means you can do simple animation (like a clock, the Game of Life, and so on). Therefore, having all of the LEDs populated is a good idea. We went with all white LEDs so that we could go “grayscale” images.
Original, we were going to have a “Pong” type game, with Red or Blue LEDs along the edges and White in the middle. We went with all one color because then we can use it for all sorts of things, not just games.
This was important because the cost of the 10 mm LEDs — $170 USD, plus the cost of the board — $95 USD. However, we used white LEDs — other colors are less expensive.