Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

SpokePOV kit for bikes

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bicyclesculpture
 
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Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

Ms. Limor,

I am finally programing 26 SpokePOVs, mounted on an antique "hi-wheel" bicycle. 24 boards are mounted on the front wheel, in a double tier fashion, to cover the long (22 inch) spokes. I am programing on a Mac PowerBook w/ a single processor.

Several years ago, when I bought all the boards, you mentioned that the double tier set-up should work just fine. My first question has to do with the program's hub size adjustment. The art was produced as a complete image, and then split like a doughnut and its hole. The outer tier's first LEDs sit on a 30 inch diameter circle from the hub. The software only seems to adjust up to 20 inches. I know you'd probably never considered the need for anything larger, but might there an easy fix to expand this size?

My second question deals also with a discussion back when I made the original purchase. We had talked about upgrading the eeproms to 32K, for more animation, and wiring all the boards to one sensor, which I have completed. At that time you said the software could handle these extra 28 images. However, on my Mac, I can't figure out how to access more than the 4 banks at the top of the program page. Could you enlighten me here?

And my final query is to whether there is a way to copy and reuse a single program? 24 boards x 32 images = 768 programs. Basically, I'm just changing the rotational degree of the image for each board (well, Ok, I have 2 colors and 2 tiers, so I've really got 4 image sets of 6). I'm not expecting sympathy here, I was just wondering if there is some way to "cut & paste" these programs from board to board?

Thank you for your time and help. -Kurt

sparr
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by sparr »

If you want to try a different way of converting your image, to get around the 20" limit, check out what I did with ImageMagic in this thread: http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=8062
You would want to adjust the "71.43%" parameter.

One piece of advice, program just two or four boards (one or two spokes) to make sure everything looks right, before you take the time to program all of them.

Also, good luck feeding 24 sensor lines from a single sensor, let us know how that works out.

adafruit
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by adafruit »

if you want more images you'll need to purchase a larger eeprom

the software should automatically detect the extra banks. i believe the maximum is 16 banks of images. this is mostly a software thing, and the code could be recompiled to support more banks. its been two and a half years since you first brought this up so some experimentation may be necessary on your part.

get it working with a few spokes before you go crazy. you can use a formal 'SPI eeprom writer' to duplicate eeproms but this is another endeavour

bicyclesculpture
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

the software should automatically detect the extra banks. i believe the maximum is 16 banks of images. this is mostly a software thing, and the code could be recompiled to support more banks. its been two and a half years since you first brought this up so some experimentation may be necessary on your part.
Thank you for your replies. As stated above, I have installed upgraded eeproms (32K), however, with the 1.4a software on my Mac, I'm only given 4 banks of graphic interface.

The hi-wheel is part of a much larger street theater project (and yes, it was sidetracked for 2+ years while I was busy building 5 other spontaneously combustible bikes), but it was discussed back then that the software upgrade to 32 images was a simple matter, and that I should contact Adafruit when I was ready to receive the upgrade. I guess that's what I was attempting to do, though I understand the laps of time does me no favor.

Combined with my hub diameter problem described above (and its alternate suggestion by sparr), it looks like I'll need to seek out someone with code experience...

adafruit
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by adafruit »

32K eeprom is 32 Kbit = 4KByte = 4 banks
you want 128Kbit eeprom. the part number should end in 128 or something like that not 32

bicyclesculpture
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

Thanks for your patience towards your analog customers, my apologies to you and your forum. I will look for a mess of 128K eeproms and a code expert.

bicyclesculpture
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

Following the "Post subject: EEPROM upgrades?" thread, I realize I need to go shopping for 256K eeproms (for 32 images) and a code expert.

adafruit
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by adafruit »

please please try what you want with the hardware youve got first...no reason to go crazy with 32 images if it doesnt even show up right, yknow? :)

bicyclesculpture
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

please please try what you want with the hardware youve got first...no reason to go crazy with 32 images if it doesnt even show up right, yknow?
Sound advice from an electronic sage, I'm sure. But the project was created to fulfill a vision, the artwork has been languishing in 128 bitmaps, the muse is in motion, and my sanity in entwined in a passionate tango with 26 SpokePOVs - The journey, I'm afraid, is only a means to the final destination.

His final entry read: "Thanks for your concern."

adafruit
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by adafruit »

:shock:

godspeed!

:mrgreen:

kayrock66
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by kayrock66 »

For duplicating images across boards, are you aware that you can save .DAT files after you have imported a BMP file into the PC software, and then bring them back in to program another board? This way you can have the exact same bitmap in each board.

I was doing a lot of conversion of image files to drive Spoke POV's so I just wrote a Matlab program that would take as its input an image file and it would output the series of .DAT files I needed. I was doing color seperations and hi-res kinds of things that would be difficult or impossible to do by hand.

You mentioned needing lots of images to do a rotation. In the time since you started your project, someone has written an shared a version of firmware that rotates a single image. Maybe this would be a short cut to your rotation vision.

bicyclesculpture
 
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Re: Hi-Wheel Multiple Board Animation

Post by bicyclesculpture »

Thanks Kayrock66- Your posts throughout this forum offer excellent insights.

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