Reminder, tis the season to find GE Color Effects Light strings on clearance. The 50 Light strings are preferred to build out the game / sign wall.

Last year, Sears, and Lowes has them deeply discounted, I checked Sears online, and them have ridiculously high prices, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Menards had Color Effects this year, but I never saw the 50 ct strings. Costco also has them, but I'm not sure if they mark them down.


Pete

Jeremy and I acquired a few strings to round out the donations from Jim and Scott. The current status is that we now have 300 pixel in 50 light strings. If you'd like to help a few more of them need their trailer hitch connectors put on. We ran out of heat shrink the other night, so there's more in the box with the strings in the classroom. If you want to be more hands on with the lights themselves and not in on the soldering. There is one more sheet of luan with holes drilled for the bulbs. and another sheet or two behind it waiting to be drilled for the bulbs.

I think it would be great to get the full sign going. I don't know of any hacker spaces doing such a large sign board / game board. It should generate some community interest, and would be a great thing to have done for Maker Faire.

Pete

Pete, I came in last night and tacked down one of the strings you soldered up (thank you very much), and made sure that the 4th connector you set up worked as well.

So I think the todo list is as follows:

For step 1 (a 10x20 grid in the current West window)
Drill the last board we have, and put in the 50 string that is ready to go onto it.
Solder up one more 50 light set, swap it with the 35 light set (or get another 4x8 sheet of luan, and mount the 50 to that, or
just decide to make do with the 35 for now)
Rehang the 4 boards in the preferred vertical configuration.
Adjust the software config to use all 4 boards.
Finalize the web site improvements so we have a bee yoo tiful control interface.
Show off!

For step 2 (the full 10x30 grid):
Add 2 more female connectors to the control box (Pete has 1 mostly done already)
Switch over to using a Raspberry Pi (assuming I get my grubby paws on one)
Prep the last 2 50 string sets and mount them on boards
Hang all 6 boards behind the classroom
Get a webcam configured so we can work without walking outside
Define and publish an API/interface/process whereby folks can add their own custom
apps to the rig
Tetris!

Cheers,

Jeremy

This looks like it would be a fun addition to the game(s) collection. A low res river raider implementation.

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/27/sixty4racer-an-8x8-game/

Pete