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?
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.