This week I finished the code for the Word Clock NeoPixel control using a Web Server, updated the design of the Web Server to make it look nicer, added comments to my code document to polish everything off, and designed and cut out PCBs for connecting the LED strips in a new way.
To start, I managed to fix the issue that wasn’t letting the Web Server control run while simultaneously updating time. I think the issue stemmed from how I was changing the RGB values for the NeoPixel. It seemed like the code would get stuck in a loop constantly checking the RGB values and never getting a chance to look for the time and I managed to fix it by changing a few lines. I then wanted to add comments to the code so that anyone who may work on the clock in the future or who is just interested in learning how it was done can have an easier time understanding the code. I also have a NEW repository for this version of the Word Clock which can be found at this link: https://github.com/sachasilvia/New-Word-Clock
I won’t include the final code here in this post because it is over 400 lines long and won’t really serve a purpose here but if you want to find all of the code I used for this project just check out the repository link above ^^^
The next part of my week I spent modeling and cutting PCBs that will serve as the new way for the LED / NeoPixel strips to be connected inside of the clock. The previous idea with the right-angle headers was good in theory but no connector would make this design work for our space confinements in the clock so the idea just wasn’t going to work how I envisioned. Instead, my teacher Mr. Christy suggested that I design some small PCBs that would allow the LEDs to be connected to headers on the PCB that allowed detachment of individual LED strips. This provided the exact need of the LED strips being module and I got to designing:
I liked the look of the design and my teacher approved of them as well so I got to cutting them out. For this design, I will need 4 PCBs that have 4 three-pin headers and 2 PCBs that have 2 three-pin headers. This is because there have to be 10 three-pin headers on each side of the LED strips and the PCBs must have an even number of three-pin headers so that the connections actually transfer from one to another. The reason I could just do 10 three-pin headers on one PCB is that the Milling Machine we have is not big enough to create a PCB that long, and neither is our stock.
Here is one of the PCBs after it was cut out from the machine, they are very small! :
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