Scaling Gives Issues

My Project Needed A Lot of Copy of Prototype

One orientation of Media Arts is to make a lot of things toward impressive expression. In my previous project, I had to control over 100 LEDs and servo motors. The problem was the gap between mass production and prototyping, because I had to connect all the boards and control those without any signal glitches. 

One of Spark Fun products suited for my project, but it still had power-source issue and was fairy expensive ($10 for each). I broke a lot of ICs during my prototyping process, and I needed at least 30 of the PCB module. And the worst was  that there were no good tutorials or reports about what I am doing or at least something similar to.

That’s why I stick to make my PCB module with my milling machine and keep modifying every modules one at a time when something wrong happened.

The following is a tested single prototype and the copied ones.

Scaling is Another Prototype

The point is, connecting the prototyped boards gives other problems that had not been there in single-run case. This is a scaling problem I faced throughout my previous project.

The data sheet said like “it can be daisy-chained up to 40 modules.” Yes! I can do this, but it was not true. Actually, my daisy chained modules won’t work in the first place, and I fought the glitches with my oscilloscope and logic analyzer in my hand.

Generally, 1. keep big ground and 2. lock the noise into smaller places are the keys to move a lot of things, and my previous post was an example.