[geeks] Electronics

[Dave Kimmel]

Hey everyone,

Bill's recent electronics projects managed to rekindle my interest in  
it as well.  So, I decided on a mildly ambitious project, a Tetris  
clone.

Tonight I (mostly) completed the first, and probably most tedious,  
bit of this project - the display.  It is a 10x21 array of LEDs, made  
up of six 5x7 LED blocks.

http://djk.smugmug.com/photos/34161579-M.jpg
http://djk.smugmug.com/photos/34161670-M.jpg

Now you can all see how bad my soldering skills are.  This is the  
kind of thing that really should have been wire-wrapped.   
Fortunately, I only had to go back and correct three spots where I  
had soldered something to the wrong pin.  Unfortunately, I haven't  
tested each LED individually, so there may be some more errors that I  
haven't discovered.

The only thing left for this part of the project is a connector.  I'm  
probably going to use a 40-pin IDE style connector, mainly because  
ready-made cables are very easy to find.  With the display not  
permanently connected I'll also be able to use it in other projects,  
which is a big plus as it was very tedious to put together.

The processor that I'll be using is an ATMega16 microcontroller and  
I'm going to try using a NES controller as the input device.  I  
haven't figured out too many of the details yet.

Assuming that I don't give up on this I'll keep everyone updated as I  
finish more pieces of it.

-- Dave Kimmel
    crisco_kid at shaw.ca