Blog
Build logs, project notes, and write-ups from the workshop.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock — Connecting the Arduino to the LED Matrix Wiring the Arduino Uno digital I/O pins to a hand-built 5×12 LED matrix clock. Covers pin assignment, the 100Ω resistor perfboard, current budgeting, and the final physical assembly step before software.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: The Finished Clock Running The Arduino Lite Brite Clock build series ends here — a 53-second clip of the completed clock keeping time in the garage, with the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremonies audible in the background.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: First Display Test and How the Digit Code Works Closing the housing for the first software test, watching all 46 LEDs count through their positions, and a walkthrough of the digit-definition approach that makes placing numbers on a multiplexed grid manageable.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Why 22-Gauge Wire Fails in Breadboards (and the Perfboard Fix) A short but useful detour — discovering that 22 AWG solid-core wire sits too loosely in standard breadboard sockets to be reliable, and why the Lite Brite Clock matrix connections need to move to soldered perfboard instead.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Soldering the LED Anode Columns Tying all the anode leads in each column together with hookup wire, soldering them solid, testing for shorts — and the moment the whole bottom row lights up for the first time.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock — Soldering the LED Cathode Rows How to solder the cathode rows of a hand-wired 5×12 LED matrix for the Arduino Lite Brite Clock. Covers matrix layout, hookup-wire loop technique, and what to watch for in dense hand-wiring.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Soldering Wires to 46 LEDs The unglamorous middle of the Lite Brite Clock build — soldering individual hookup wires to the cathode lead of every LED in the matrix, one at a time, with the trick that makes it not take all day.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Wiring the Perfboard (100Ω Anode Resistors) Cutting perfboard to size, positioning twelve 100Ω current-limiting resistors for the anode column lines, and soldering the hookup wires that will feed back to the Arduino — the Lite Brite Clock matrix taking shape.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Inserting 46 LEDs Into the Pegboard (Front-Load Only) Forty-six LEDs, one at a time — why the Lite Brite pegboard only accepts LEDs from the front, how to keep polarity straight across the whole grid, and the family workshop session where it all gets done.
- Arduino Lite Brite Clock: Testing LEDs Before You Solder (and What Happens If You Skip the Resistor) Why you test every LED with a resistor and a 9V battery before making any permanent solder joints — and a live demonstration of what a bare LED touching a 9V terminal looks like. Spoiler: it is not good.