Lynx USB Dongle Assembled!

[Mimir]

I finished my first dongle tonight.  I haven't fully tested it yet, but Vixen seems to like it.  Tomorrow, I hope to see it controlling my rgb lights.

Been a long time since I had a soldering iron in my hand for more than just fixing a broken wire! 

 

John

[rimist]

Congratulations!

-Rimist

[lineman]

CONGRATS

[devoidelk]

Grats I'm sure I will be just as excited when i build my equipment.. Will be the first time i had to solder anything. eeeek

[Mimir]

I would not be too intimidated by it. The dongle is a very easy and straight forward build. The manual available in the wiki is super easy to follow and takes you through the whole thing step by step.

[Slite]

Just be sure you have the proper tools...

Most important (and this can not be stressed enough) is a decent soldering iron. Do NOT be stingy when it comes to that. Buy a quality one.

Also, pick up a cheap, simple electronics kit from RadioShack (I thkink it's called over there)

This one for instance: Velleman® MK102 Flashing LEDs Kit

That will teach you to solder along with the instructions on the Wiki here. These things are PoC to solder. My first job soldering was to chip PS2's ... You had to solder 16 wires onto one of the Playstations surface mounted processors... That was fun!

But the good thing is... Now I'm not afraid to take a soldering iron to anything! 

[rm357]

Me neither, but plastic sure stinks :p
RM

[Christmas.joe]

Been a long time since I had a soldering iron in my hand for more than just fixing a broken wire! 

 

John

Just wait...pretty soon, you be so addicted to this stuff and you'll be spending all your time melting lead, stringing wires, cutting PVC, sequencing Christmas music that you listen to all year round.  You're officially hooked.  Congratulations!

 

[caretaker]

Congrats!   You are now officially warned that these blinking lights will lead to an addiction which you may not want to control.

[rimist]

Absolutely true about the addiction. Asking how many channels do you need is like asking how many lights do you need. The answer is always the same: as many as I can afford.

-Rimist

[NavyGator]

Congratulations on the build. Let me know any feed back on the manual if you had any problems so I can make changes if needed.

Rich

[Mimir]

I already have the addiction.  I have been playing with an arduino and some GE35 lights I got on sale a Lowes after Christmas.  I found out that my brother in Texas and his best friend have been doing this for a long time. 

The manual is fantastic.  Very easy to follow and the pictures really help.  The only part that you might look at is that when I printed the manual out, the pictures and the directions were not always on the same page, so I had to flip back and fourth some.

[mkozik1]

OK - Have to ask what the big thing is about Arduino?  I have seen that in several areas here but not sure what people are using it for and what it does that the components on this site cannot satisfy?

Thanks in advance,

Mark - Georgia

[Steve Gase]

OK - Have to ask what the big thing is about Arduino?

Me too... I see Arduino mentioned all over the place.  Mouser even carries kits.  What is the excitement all about?

[randyy]

OK - Have to ask what the big thing is about Arduino?

Me too... I see Arduino mentioned all over the place.  Mouser even carries kits.  What is the excitement all about?

I'm by no means an arduino expert, but have built a couple and used them in projects.  In short, Arduinos will do nothing that the PICs can't do (from what I can tell as a noobie) for the dmx/lighting thing.  Arduino is an open source series of boards based upon an Amtel ATseries chip.  They have standards for the pinouts with set spacing so that you can plug daughter cards (called shields) onto them.  Otherwise, they are simply a micro controller.  Their popularity seems to come from the open hardware specs, the ease of customizing the controller by stacking shields on top, a robust open source library for programming, and a relatively inexpensive prototyping environment.