New dongle manual in the wiki

[cubbieco]

You should probably mention right clicking the two files I mentioned in the earlier post and clicking install.  i don't have it in front of me.  Otherwise following the instructions as written you aren't actually installing the drivers yourself and the windows update will just do it. 

Basically they are .inf files which is what you right click and choose install when you want to install a driver manually.

[jeffcoast]

I used the new manual today to make my first dongle, and it really helped. I only had 2 problems. Not being all that knowledgeable about electronics, I wasn't sure if the 1uf capacitors had to be installed a certain way as the other one did, so I did some google searches to learn a little more about them and figured out those didn't matter.

My second problem had to do with installing the octocoupler chip. The one I got didn't have a notch and only had a little dot where pin 1 is, so had to guess that pin 1 should go toward the end with the notch on the socket.

It seems to work, although windows assigned it to com3, which was the same port my d-light dongle was already on, so changed that and it seems to play nice. Now need to get the Smart String controllers, then I guess I'll have to reprogram the PIC when RJ releases the new firmware for his pixelnet.

[tbone321]

Either that or build another dongle for pixelnet.

[jeffcoast]

Well, I am thinking I will need 2 pixelnet dongles as it is. And got 2 PCBs off RJ to build. At the moment I was planning on just continuing with the d-light controllers I have and adding the smart strings to line my roofline and figure I will end up with more than 4096 channels. I only ordered the parts for 1 dongle just to make sure I could get it to work. I had some issues with too much solder in a few places, but had ordered some solder wick just in case.