I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been keeping busy. For one thing, I've started playing Eve Online with a very old friend. I won't however be discussing that in this post (although I'm sure he's been wondering where I am since I got my Arduino).
Unless you don't know how to read you will know that the subject of this post is using Sparkfun's 2x2 RGB LED Button Pad breakout PCB. If you actually don't know how to read then you probably don't know that I wrote such a stupid thing to begin with. I was pretty excited to play around with this nice little breakout board when I got it, but after I soldered all my connections and hooked it up to my breadboard I found that it didn't work the way I had expected. Being a total noob with electronic engineering it took me several days of trial and error and the help of a person on the SFE (Sparkfun Electronics) forums who was having some of the same problems. I figured out how everything works and decided that while I learned a lot having to figure it out myself, it would have been much better if I could have just learned quickly from some simple instructions and or examples. I have attempted to put together some resources to start out a beginner who finds himself/herself in the same situation.
I have recorded a video to attempt to explain how things work, but really the code is fairly heavy with documentation. Please to enjoy!
Video explanation / demonstration.
Breadboard layout (click for full image)
Schematic (click for full image)
SFE 2x2 RGB LED Button Pad Control v1 (sketch)
SFE 2x2 RGB LED Button Pad Control v2 (sketch)
Relevant Links
Hardware: Button Pad 2x2 - Breakout PCB
Hardware: Button Pad 2x2 - LED Compatible
Hardware: SparkFun Inventor's Kit for Arduino
Hardware: Arduino Uno
Fritzing (both the breadboard picture and the schematic were made using this)
