<cynic>

So, a top ten hit then?

</cynic>

I wont accept anything less than number 1.

Kos for number 1 :D

I now have this:


connected to this:


so I can fly my quadcopter using my Taranis! Amazing stuff the Arduinos can do :D

I will get around to doing a better job of the wiring, making it a more permanent arrangement so I can attach it to my transmitter without felling like all the wires are going to snap off.

The Taranis powers a 3.3V regulator which powers the Mini and the Transceiver. Little voltage divider with 2 resistors to drop the PPM output of the transmitter to a safe level. And a USBASP device to flash a hex file.

My parts from China are trickling in.

White LED strips and transistors arrived today which gave me something to play with.

A quick PWM fading test



Then adding them to thr timed and LDR control LEDs.

The LED strips flicker a bit too much when dimmed. Not sure if that's because they are being powered by the batteries, the strips are too long or because they struggle with the low PWM load.

Awesome. I like fading LEDs :)

What do you have in between the arduino and LEDs? Is that an LED driver or sommat? 

And here is a video of my X4 controlled with my Taranis

12V power from the battery pack and a TIP120 transistor for each strip.

Gotcha. 

My LD strips in th bdroom dfinitly flickr whn thy are dimmd. Not too noticabl whn looking at them but if you move you eyes around or wav things in front of thm it's easy to spot.

(Not to Milko: th "E" on my laptop kyboard has stoppd working proprly so all my input mthods ar now unrliabl :O )

Cut a few bits of the LED strips and played with those.

Need to wait for the Shift Registers to arrive to really test things properly.

Added a push button to change between modes

World clock
Fading
Pre-set brightness

Cool, nice work. Did the smaller strips work better with the battery powering them? Couldn't see the flickering in the video. I hadn't even thought about using those strips with the Arduino.

Have you got a resistor connected through that button? No need for it if you set the pin as INPUT_PULLUP.

Actually how noticeable is the flicker when the strips are dimmed low? I'm wondering if maybe using one of these could make my bedroom lights less flickery, the PWM frequency is around 500Hz.

Still flickering, but I'll see what they're actually like when I get the shift registers and mains power supply. Though I would've thought that batteries would give a smoother DC supply in comparison to a mains adapter doing a conversion.

I am currently using a resistor as I've stolen a bit of the code from elsewhere to switch between modes.

I want to make the button press also kill the current loop as well as change mode because currently it has to wait for the existing loop to finish then the mode changes. Problem with that is I might have a decent length delay of maybe 60 seconds on the timezone mode to prevent too much changing of intensity due to the LDR. Waiting upto 60 seconds to change from the timezone mode would be annoying.

Is it just the PWM flicker, not there when brighter? I bought a LED driver for my lights. It came with a shitty transformer that made a horrible buzzing sound and lots of people on Amazon had said the transformer had blown up. I don't really know if I needed a LED driver with the lights or a normal transformer would have been ok with the bits that come with them.

The INPUT_PULLUP works the same but the values for detecting are opposite, so low for closed and high for open so you'd have to swap them if using someone's code with a pulldown resistor.

You probably want a timer/counter instead of a delay. Check each time the loop function runs that a certain time has passed and change values or do something. That way you can also check button presses regularly. If that makes sense.

Fixed the laptop. A bit of insulation from one of the wires had lodged itself under the E key.

I opened up the control box for my lights and that had an Atmel chip in it. It also has huge solder pads for the 3 transistors but the one soldered to the pads are tiny and only just touch the corners.

Here's a pic

Can you unplug the lights from the control box?

Yes. It has a 12V input, an IR sensor and a 4 pin output to control the LEDs.

Those pads look like they're meant to aid hear dissipation from the transistors.

I did wonder that but isn't the component supposed to sit in the white square? Looks like a bigger part could go there.

A bigger part *could* go there (as in, there's space for a bigger part) but that doesn't mean a bigger part *has* to go there. 

It's pretty common when designing a PCB to tweak the design so that a range of different component packages can fit in, depending on what stock you have in/what's currently cheap to buy. Saves you redesigning the PCB every time you change supplier.

I'd still guess that those big pads are just to make for better heat dissipation. 
 

This guy shows a few good examples of simple layout changes to make your boards more flexible:

http://www.robotroom.com/PCB-Layout-Tips.html