one monkey typing

I had a package of switches coming from China burst open and most didn't arrive, and the seller never reshipped like he said. Finally got a refund and ordered from a supplier from Canada that I've used before.

I also ordered another 500 pink LEDs - they are super pretty and the people that saw them all agreed that people would be willing to pay a little more for them - they're twice the money as most of the other colors.

Anyway, once all that stuff arrives, I'll be able to complete packaging of the kits. Programming of the chips will wait until later since I still have plenty of room on the chips for more patterns, so I'll leave that until a couple of weeks before the convention.

I've been falling behind on my personal journaling so I'll just do everything in this post.

Got the rest of the Duckon LEDs in today. Wow. The pink LEDs are PRETTY. We only got enough for 10 sets. They're a bit expensive at $1.20 per set instead of about 60 cents a set for the other colors. I think they're probably going to be gone pretty much instantly. I may change my mind and charge a little extra for them, though that involves bookkeeping that I'd just as soon not have to deal with. Most people seemed fine with just charging a flat rate regardless of color.

I somehow inflamed my left ankle about 4 weeks ago riding bike. It's been slowly getting better. I tried riding last Wednesday but it got a little worse as a result so I left off again. It's almost completely healed but I can still feel a bit of weirdness in there so with only one weekday left I'll wait until Monday to try again. I'm getting to where I've had QUITE enough of driving for a while.

I seem to have fallen behind on 3D printing again. Both machines running to try to catch up. Blinkie kit prep is stalled until I get black PLA loaded in one of the machines again. I do now have all of the LEDs counted out into the kit bags, the rest will only take an hour or so total. Need to write and print the instructions though.

I assembled another demo of the new blinkie, this time with blue LEDs. Then I discovered that these blue LEDs are bright. I mean, they're really, really retina searingly bright.

So I spent the evening adding brightness control code to the firmware. I managed to work it in to the single-button control in a way that I hope is not too confusing.

As a bonus, the dimmer modes should really stretch the battery life - the dimmest mode with the blue LEDs is still reasonably bright, but the LEDs only run 1/255th of the time. For all I know the thing could run a few hundred hours on a set of batteries in that mode even wtih blue LEDs.

Ordered the tactile switches and poly bags from eBay. The CPUs, resistors and IC sockets are in the cart at Mouser but awaiting word whether to drop some more stuff into the basket.

I did the tweaks I wanted to make on the battery holder design (wider slot to push the batteries out, moved the retention ridge down a little to make the batteries more snug, then printed out a few revs at different wall thickness and infill percentages. The final version is very tough, I had to really try pretty hard to break it. It won't break unless someone is trying to break it. I have the first 25 of those being made on the printer right now.

I also grabbed three more breadboards from one of the vendors. They were $9 for 3, what the heck. Mine are so old that the contacts are getting rather corroded and they're not particularly reliable anymore. I think the newest one is something like 25 years old now.

Once again I'll be running the Blinkie room at Duckon 21.

I'm looking for GTers (or anyone qualified that I can grab) who will be there and can help out in running the room. Anything from an hour up would be helpful. Last year I spent from 8AM to 2AM in that room Friday and Saturday, and I'd like to get out of there a bit more. I have some programming I would like to present and can't do it if I can't get out of the room.

Ability to solder and debug blinkies is nice but not a prerequisite - by manning the front desk, taking money, etc, you can free up someone who can get on the floor and help people with their projects.

Usually the technical help is just helping people who don't really know how to solder, looking over a board carefully and finding bad solder joints, parts in backwards, etc.

The blinkie room will be running the same hours as last year, which is a bit less than in prior years. Friday 5PM to 10PM, Saturday 9AM to 7PM.

This is a fun gig, we get to help people make things. I saw a lot of Duckon 20 blinkies being worn around Windycon this year, so people really like them and Blinkies is often cited as one of the most fun parts of the convention. I'm happy to be able to help carry on this tradition. I may also have non-blinkie type things this year, I'm thinking about doing something like having "Useless Machine" kits, which are super easy to make and are pretty fun.

If you can help, please email me, if you have any idea when you'll be able to chip in, let me know that too. I want to get a handle on how much time I'll be able to get away from the room to do presentations. I know that this will be hard to coordinate since many people won't know when they'll be able to help until they see the program book, and I won't be able to say what programming I'll be able to do until I see who can help when.

I'm going to be checking out the new hotel this weekend, getting floor plans and taking pictures of the proposed room and trying to work out how many stations we'll be able to place. Last year we had 24 and that worked out pretty well.

The blinkie ran about 27 to 28 hours with blue LEDs. I think it'd probably run at least another 10 hours with red or green LEDs, maybe 5 more with yellow. Not because they draw less power, but because they will run on fewer volts. The chip will run on practically nothing, I think it'll keep running down to 1.2 volts or something like that, but blue LEDs need 3.2 volts or so to light up, whereas red LEDs will keep running down to I think a bit less than 2 volts.

27 hours with blue is acceptable to me. When I get the full kits in 3 or 4 weeks I'll assemble some with different colors and see how they do.

The 3D printer figured big in this year's blinkie design. Not only is the battery holder printed, but I used a gerber-to-gcode conversion script to enable me to use the RepRap to lay down the ink on the blank PCB to make the prototype, and by the time June rolls around I may have a printed sleeve to go on it that diffuses the LED light.

( more yammering and a few photos after the cut )