That's pretty cool, I like that. Look forward to seeing it when it's done :)

I think I'll initially have the time zones set to dawn/dusk times around spring.

If there's enough space on the arduino I could have a more complete set of times, maybe covering 4 seasons. There's probably a way to calculate this and massively reduce the amount of code but I'm just using set values at the moment.

This doesn't account for the northern hemisphere being different to the southern. That would probably mean I'd need about 72 regions for it to look reasonable - 24 Northern, 24 Equatorial, 24 Southern. I think that would be overkill.

Not a great deal of memory available on the Arduino. Unless you added an SD card to it if the data takes up too much space. How much do you think you'd need for it? How much difference is there between the hemispheres?

There's definitely quite a bit at the extremes (summer/winter)

Today



June 19th

http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/

Go there
Click Set Time
Press and hold the plus button on months and see how much it changes.

Or set it to 22nd March and pan through the hours, that's probably what I'll be going for.

Quite a lot then, yes. Worth doing on your map then ;)

Best way would be to use Einsien's equations for general relativity, give the Arduino the spacetime coordinates for the sun and every led on the map, and let it work it out. Simple :D

The RTCs arrived today (10 days) - annoyingly without any pins but I have a load of spares anyway

I've sorted the time side of things and it seems to be working on my small 6 LED setup.

Both my RTCs came without pins. One from this country with a battery and one from foreign. There are 2 sides the pins can go so maybe they leave it up to you to decide. They're nice and easy to use anyway. Not sure what to do with my spare yet.

I'm currently making a breakout board for my LCD screen with contrast pot, PWM transistor and shift register attached. It will make it much easier connecting it up to my Uno.

Sounds like the same type as mine (the cheapest!).

I didn't want them soldering, I just want the free pins!

Most of the bits I've bought have been the cheapest. So far no problems with them. These prototype soldering boards I've bought are very flimsy though.

So you wanted the pins for later, not for the RTC?

Here is my LCD board. It's not pretty, front or back. But does it work? Not sure if it works yet. And a picture of my "workshop."

It works. Amazing. At first I thought something was wrong but I forgot to adjust the contrast. This will make LCD connections so much easier and quicker, and probably reliable.

It took far longer to make than I thought it would though.

The banana peel's a nice touch. Is it just for decoration, or does it function when you wire it up?

I use it for wiping off the flux after soldering.

That reminds me, I could do with some female header pins.

You're welcome. I might need some more soon. Might order ssome right angle ones as well.

Making a floppy organ. I know it's bindun etc. but I still think they're pretty cool.

Got a bunch of drives from my brothers work and just started working how to play with them.

So far got the stepping and direction sussed, so that's nice as that's basically all I need. Just need to get my head around interrupts to drive multiple drives at once.

Also, it's not being driven by an Arduino: it's using an mbed which is a cool little arm based Dev board.

It lives!: http://youtu.be/PoT8VbaLp4g

Incidentally, the lecturer, who let's me use the lab space for silly projects, his first proper job after graduating was to design a floppy disc controller IC at Siemens (for Western Digital, strangely enough). He was dead excited at seeing my stack of floppy drives (yes, john) but then seemed a bit disappointed that none of them had his chip in them.

I think your organ needs a little tuning. That sounds horrible.

Definitely needs tuning. That was just random frequency/button pressing.

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So, a top ten hit then?

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