New TM18XXIC support on SSC V2?

[mykroft]

Is the new V2 SSC going to support any of the other 18XX chips?  Was just looking at Ray's store and see all the new stuff he has but it does not look like any of its compat with our SSC boards?

Anyone have any info if this is going to change?

Thanks
Myk

[animal]

Boy i hope so. I just bought 30 sets of 100s. Ray emailed me due to a delay. It is takeing close to 3 weeks to get. They are on there way. I guess they will be the new ones.

   Animal

[rm357]

If you ordered from the wiki, you are safe...

If not...
There are 4 flavors, three speeds, and three voltages...

1803 - no
1804, 1809, 1812 - if speed and voltage are right

Slow, fast, ?? (400, 800, & 1600 Kbps)
The sscs do the 800 Kbps. Some strings don't seem to care about the speed, but the strips are less tolerant

5v, 12v, 24v.
All smartstring hardware is 12v. There is no easy way to convert it to 5v. I thought about putting a 5 volt regulator after the ssc, but then realized that I would need a really big heat sink to dissipate 28 watts... (7 volt drop x ~4 amps)

If you bought the cheapest 18xx strings, there is a good chance that they are the 5v version.

If all else fails, the San devices e681 will do almost any type of node, but it is different...
If you go that route, be sure to dry run the assembly process. When I bought mine there were some things that were not clear and correcting the omissions was more difficult after everything else was already soldered to the board.

RM

[animal]

Whewww!   Got it from the wiki. 

                         animal

[chrisatpsu]

If you new, or at least new to the smart strings. I 100% reccomend getting your strings from the links in the wiki.

if you're more advanced and feeling like you have money to possibly waste, then if you're going to want to try other things, get small samples first to see if they even work before you commit to a big purchase.  But most likely you wont get help on from people on here, b/c they're versed in what's in the wiki, not the other items.

[mykroft]

This is my 3rd year of smart string products - I have gotten the approved wiki items - but Ray has added some nice stuff like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login for example - would be really nice to add into a mega tree etc.

I just was curious if anyone knew if the V2 SSC had any newer capabilities as far as Ray's new products...

thanks
Myk

[JonB256]

At the Academy, RJ did mention the addition of "grouping" to the firmware.

Since I am awaiting arrival of my first SSCs anyway, flashing to new firmware (when released) won't be a big deal. I would like to use grouping for a specific application, but I have figured out how I'd do it in software anyway, so it isn't critical.

[chrisatpsu]

mykroft, that item wont work.  it's a TM1803.   that chip is the "not compatible" one of the bunch.

see how easy it is to possibly buy something to find out later it wont work the way you want?

[mykroft]

why, its has the same communication specs as the other 400 or 800 for the speed?  Hence the reason of asking if V2 was adding the other TM18XX chips for compatibility.....

NVM - using another option

[rm357]

It's all about options.

For new folks, fewer options are better. Buy this, this, and this and know that they will work together. If something is not working, there are fewer things that can be mis-configured by accident.

When you start adding other options, everything gets exponentially more complex.

For this site, we want to keep things accessible to the new folks. To do that means narrowing down the choices a little.

While you can argue the merits of one string type vs another, in the end it's just a string. The strings that we use were chosen with a number of design trade-offs in mind. For example, 12v strings cost a few cents more per node, but you can have 128 in a single string. 5v nodes have issues when you get more than 50 in a string and require additional power insertion beyond that...

Different chips use different protocols. Ours provides 8 bits per color yielding true 24 bit color per node, a maximum refresh rate close to 30 Hz and are pretty reliable.

So the only reason left to support other node types is because of a particular form factor - balls, side firing nodes, disks, etc. That argument is valid... But now things are getting more complex...