Introducing ChibiCube v2.0

[RoccoMarco]

Hello folks, here we are. A new version of ChibiCube is ready and here there is the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bQdFiwFFjk
I've attached the schematic and my dear friend Tony Galano will upload something else.
I'll upload the code ASAP. I'm still working on it.

[Giovanni]

LOL, nice video thanks for mentioning ChibiOS.

Could you share also Gerber files and SW?

Giovanni

[tonygalano]

Here we are! ... ops! ... Hallo everyone, this is my first post on the forum and now it's time to get out from the shadows
I'm Antonio Galano alias tonygalano ...( nice to meet you all )... and I'm working at this project with RoccoMarco
In the attachments there are images of the PCB and gerber files
Hope U like this work ...
Stay Tuned!

[RoccoMarco]

LOL, nice video thanks for mentioning ChibiOS.

Could you share also Gerber files and SW?

Giovanni

It's a pleasure as well as an honor

[toxygen]

Having recently watched the Sochi Olympics opening, I was left quite puzzled with the following thing:

Every spectator was given a LED medal which was prepared for him at his seat. It looked like this:

medal.jpg (115.02 KiB) Viewed 12662 times

Before they were used by spectators, they were left in the front of the seats as follows:

a9ad2ff35d4c28054b0f6a706700b886.jpg (53.72 KiB) Viewed 12662 times

During the ceremony, they all were used as a one big LED screen, pictured here:

opening-ceremony-sochi-winter-olympics-001.jpg (387.08 KiB) Viewed 12662 times

There is even a nice video which shows pretty much most of the effects used during the whole ceremony:
http://turbina.avc-cvut.cz/public/.kniha/leds.mp4

Knowing that there was 44000 of those medals, there are some ideas I have about how they controlled them, but I'm not really sure if there is nothing easier.

My best bet is that they are using few mhz signal (44000 x 5 (5 bits for 32 colors) x 10 (hz) = 2.2MHz), akin to dvb-t signal. Encoding color is trivial, specifying position is more tricky though. My guess is that they are using serial number of each processor (or maybe serial number in flash/eeprom) to map it to specific seat (done before the event in backend) and with help of some simple algorithm (SN % 44000) each device knows which byte/bits in signal corresponds to it.

My friend has a similar led device, he dismantled it and found low-energy 27mhz transponder (!) inside with low-energy mcu. This puts my theory in question, because, why would they need transciever? Maybe they are using it to make one huge distributed network from these devices?

My question therefore would be if anyone can shine a little bit of light to this issue and introduce me to this wonderful technology many thanks

[RoccoMarco]

why would they need transciever?
in my opinion, most likely to check if the medal was moved from its properly position and (in this case) to disable it in order to not screw up the picture...
but I think that this question is off topic. However, we can try to replicate the game (with less medals) to experiment pratical problems
actually we are trapped on a little 8x8x8 led cube, Sochi is too much for my team

[unicondor]

Thanks for your replace. I downloaded the gerber file and asap i will start to print PCB.

Is there possible to download also the code used to control the cube?

Thanks so much

Flavio

[unicondor]

I also found this scheme for the Controller. Is a little bit simple for me ( I'm not an electrical engineer ).

It's the same if i print this PCB instead of your?

[Giovanni]

It is not quite the same, the SW would not be compatible.

Giovanni

[RoccoMarco]

Thanks for your replace. I downloaded the gerber file and asap i will start to print PCB.

Is there possible to download also the code used to control the cube?

Thanks so much

Flavio

I could share right now s3dl library but I'm still working on it. I'd like to upload the final version 1.0. I should finish it by the end of the week.