Flipdots

We got these playful things from our Munich friends, see their page for more info and links to other spaces using these devices.

Videos

See the Flipdots playlist on our YouTube channel for videos posted featuring our flipdots.

Second controller prototype 

FlipdoTiny uses an ATtiny2313 (they're cheap, have enough pins, and we already have some for miniPOV3). You can see a photo of the working prototype on the right, click on it to see it in full size. The code is in plain C, using an interrupt to receive simple packets on USART (RS-232) at 9600 bps, 1 stop bit, no parity. Two kind of packets are handled currently, these can be seen below (each character represents a single bit).

• 001ccccc dddddddd dddddddd (3 bytes) writes the data in d bits to column c (0-23), ACKs with ASCII "C" when ready ("1" bits in the data will turn to black, "0" bits are left in their current state)
• 0001rrrr dddddddd dddddddd dddddddd (4 bytes) writes the data in d bits to column r (0-15), ACKs with ASCII "R" when ready ("0" bits in the data will turn to white, "1" bits are left in their current state)

The source code for the firmware, the schematics and the Python code for the PC can be found in our GitHub repository.

TODO

• experiment with higher framerates by
  • raising the USART speed to 115200 bps
  • implementing a simple FIFO

Our ASCII art version of the pinout

.         oo
          oo GND
COL_DATA  oo GND
ROW_CLOCK oo GND
COL_CLOCK oo GND  -- cable comes from this direction
COL_OE    oo GND
ROW_OE    oo GND
STROBE    oo GND
ROW_DATA  oo GND
          oo      -- red cable comes on this side