Full Scale Production

Backers, I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving Holiday. I wanted to let you know that we have been making great progress on many fronts.

Matrix Production – we have been working with Worthington Assembly to get all of our matrix boards assembled. Prior to the holidays that were able to overnight me proofs of the assembly run. Everything checked out perfect and they are completing final assembly on all the remaining panels this week.

Hardware Connectors – We just received word from Hobbyking that our bulk order is set to ship and should arrive early next week. This order includes all of the heavy silicon wire connectors and servo cables.

Shipments – With all the fulfillment items coming available we will begin shipping all of the reward level as soon as we can. I am hoping to get all of the rewards shipped by Christmas.

Fadecandy Led Controller – I previously posted how I was able to collaborate with Trammell Hudson and Micah Elizabeth Scott on different ways to control the RGB-123 matrices. Micah has done a tone of work and posted a ton of great documentation on herFadecandy controllers. These controllers are available in short supply via Tindie as she ramps up for a full production run of these controllers. We will be offering the Fadecandy Controllers for sale at www.rgb-123.com when they become available in quantity. The Fadecandy controller is probably the best bet for those who purchased the 1×8 and 8×8 matrices. They are able to produce 48 bit color using some really neat software tricks, but are limited to controlling a maximum of 64 leds per led channel.

Beaglebone Black (BBB) – Previously, I mentioned that Trammell Hudson had done some amazing work to get the BBB working with the RGB-123 matrices. Due to the OS nature of Trammell’s code I have been attempting to work with other OS developers to adapt Trammell’s initlal work into something more closely tailored to the RGB-123 matrices and the tighter timing requirement of the WS281B leds. Luckily, Yona Appletree had already been working to develop and improve Trammell’s code. This fork of the LEDscape code can be found on Github. By following the readme.md guide anyone with a BBB can quickly and easily connect up to 48 panels (in parallel) of 256 leds. This control option is going to be the best choice for all those who purchased the 8×16,16×16, 8×64, and 32×38 reward levels. I am currently working on a custom “Cape” that will allow to break these signal lines into an easier format.

Beaglebone Black and RGB-123 8×8 Matrix

One of the coolest part of this Kickstarter has been to meet and collaborate with so many people. I am truly humbled by some of the folks and their accomplishments that are working in the area of lighting design and control. You can see a glimpse of some of Yona’s work in the video below.