Maker Faire Build Night 2015-02-26
This is part of the Noisebridge Booth for Maker Fair 2015 project
The project continues.
This night we tested LEDs under the resin table surface test peice that we made last time. It did not go as smoothly as expected, but we learned and we ended up with a decent test.
The mylar sheet that was sandwiched between the casting void and the backer board did not stick to the resin at all. It would be good to find a way to get it to lay flat next time. I'm thinking that we could spray mount it to a flat surface.
The "LED crew" was not able to attend this evening, so Torrey and I did our best. On the way to NB I picked up a double density (60 LED / meter) of RGB strip, and a remote IR controller from Cool Neon, whom has been very helpful so far, so that we could test. Torrey had soldered some before, and I had attended Circuit Hacking Monday once, so we felt pretty confident that we could figure it out.
Except, the wires on the LED controller don't match the leds. So working this out took longer that we expected. We opted to use the proven 'Guess and Check' method and eventually worked it out.
Also, soldering wires to those little pads on the waterproof RGB strip was not simple but after a couple of youtube videos Torrey seemed to be getting the feel for it. We learned that one should add solder to the wires and pads separately, and then solder them together. I couldn't tell if we were using flux core solder, so we used some on everything just in case. If anyone knows of a good video or tutorial for wiring and soldering these strips, please add a link to it here:
Despite our best efforts we couldn't seem to make the thing work properly. Maybe next time more advance research will be needed. Fortunately, we knew of this place where you could usually find hackers who tend to be down to help others with projects. With Signal's help we made more progress and got a few tips on how to solder the LED strips more reliably.
Then we started to look a the the test piece together.
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