With the (first order) of parts on hand it was time to blow something up! The actual intention was to see if I could connect the power supply, controller, and an LED string and blink the lights, but I have a history of success in connecting electronic devices in a way that lets out the magic smoke…
One of the first discoveries is that there are almost no instructions included with these random parts. The few instructions that are included are confusing, incomplete, and appear to be a Google translation from another language. Apparently using an old version of Google translate.
No problem! Set up my electronics workbench (also known as clearing off a spot on my desk) and get to work. Step one was to wire everything together and plug it in.
Nothing. OK, go over the “instructions” again, hit the Internet, and cruise YouTube. Turns out that I didn’t understand which three outputs of the 8 available on the controller should be used.
Connect the wires according to the new knowledge and the LEDs light up. Cycle through the presets on the controller and various colors flash away. Success on step one!
Since various devices were going to be connected and disconnected repeatedly the very next thing was to find a small piece of plywood and bolt the power supply and controller to it. And clamp the power cord to the plywood so that I wouldn’t damage the delicate terminals on the power supply. This made it much easier to move the test rig around and to change things. I quickly learned that plugging and unplugging the power cord to turn it on and off was a nuisance and added a power switch to the breadboard.
With the hardware basics done it was time to tackle the hard part – software!
The K1000-C controller was selected because it has an editing package for developing lighting effects. Unfortunately the software package included with the controller wouldn’t install. A bit of research uncovered the website to download the latest version.
This website felt sketchy to me. I’m somewhat paranoid about installing and running unknown software and this just made me nervous. Fortunately I have more than one PC available! Dig out an old machine I didn’t especially care about and install the software on that.
This time the software installed. And ran. And looked like something out of the 1990’s. Distinctly primitive looking. But a reasonable set of capabilities.
After a few hours of research, YouTube, poking around, exploring 17 approaches that don’t work, and digging through several desk drawers to find an SD Card I finally had my first program. And it worked!
Deciding to go for broke I hooked up the 8×32 LED panel and studied the instructions for scrolling text. An hour or so later I had “Test” scrolling across the panel! OK, let’s see if we can really master this. A few minutes later I had the joy of watching “Test Red Green Blue” scrolling – with the text in white, red, green, and blue.
On that high note I turned everything off and walked away for the day.