Telepathic Circuit Build Tutorial

[karsthotep]

So as promised I am going to try and post a complete build tutorial here for your very own Telepathic Circuits.    This will be a 10 LED TC.     This will be in several parts to make it easier for me to write.    

First off is the parts list.   I purchased all of mine from JameCo electronics https://www.jameco.com, and Aidafruit https://www.adafruit.com They are available elsewhere.

You will need


Arduino Uno R3
jameco part number: 2151486
$21.95 (US)


9vDC 1 amp power supply for the Arduino
jameco part number: 2234100 (This is the US adapter, there are other ones.)
$10.95


USB A male to USB B male cable (for programming the Arduino from your computer)
jameco part number: 229711
$1.95



ZipWire 40-piece 20​cm male to female
jameco part number: 2260754
$4.95

20 5MM LED's of your choice.  I used these from Adafruit


Super Bright White 5mm LED (25 pack)
PRODUCT ID: 754

And you will need 20 resistors,  these are the ones I purchased, (Also from adafruit) when I was reverse engineering from pictures,  they may be too high as I haven't used them yet, so i'll be learning and teaching in this tutorial as well.


Through-Hole Resistors - 470 ohm 5% 1/4W - Pack of 25
PRODUCT ID: 2781

 That is it for this post, more to come.

Karst

[warmcanofcoke]

I am excited to see these tutorials materialise in the workshop. 
Looking forward to reading more.

[karsthotep]

I couldn't agree more, I think there should be more of them.   So to continue were I left off, lets get building. 

  Now that you have the parts you need for this build, we need something to mount the lights to.   As this is a prototype I used foam core cut into circles.    You can of course do yours out of any material you choose.    I traced out two of the size circle that I wanted based on the clearance of my TC housings. 

Like So.


Next you will want to figure out where you want to mount your LED's.   I had a glass the size I wanted so I traced out a line on each disk.


Now since you have 10 LED's we have to evenly space them.    The way I did this was googled 10 segment circle,  i found an image and printed it off and used that for my spacing




And just made little marks where the LED will be located.


Now that you have your spacing marked out, lets get those LED's on.   

Your LED's will have a long lead (this is the positive) and a short Lead (This is the Negative) 


Using a pin I punched in the holes I needed to slide the leads through.     Your short lead or negative terminal will
need to be facing inward, all positive leads are facing outwards. 

Mount your LED's


When you are done you'll have something like this


Good Job so far,  you are crushing this TC build.  Keep it up.

Here is the back side,  you want to bend all your inside negative leads inwards, and your positive leads outwards.  This will
make it easier for you when it comes to connecting everything together.


Alright, now we start getting things connected.  The main goal of this is to connect all the negative leads together.  You can do this many ways as long as they are all connected in the end.   I chose to take some copper wire that I had and create a circle.   The wire
is 20 gauge.  You will need some basic soldering skills for this.  Not to worry though soldering is very easy and you can find plenty of
tutorials on youtube.  Do not be intimidated by it, it is very easy. 

When you do your soldering I would recommend getting a helping hands setup.  Basically a platform with clips to hold your work while you solder.   


You are going to solder all your negative leads together.   Like so. 

[karsthotep]

Now that you have all your negative leads connected, we need to have a way to run this to ground on your Arduino.  To do this
take one of your zip wires and peel it off.  Clip off the female end and then strip the wire sheath off with wire strippers so you have
the bare metal strands.    One thing that I would recommend is to tin all of your wires. It keeps them from unraveling and makes soldering them easier.    Tinning is simply adding a small amount of solder to your exposed wires, coating them and binding them together so they do not fray.  Again,  you can look up tinning, on youtube.   

See that black wire, that is my zip wire soldered to the copper ring. 


Ok,  lets let that percolate for a bit before we continue on. 

[Davros Skaro]

This is looking & coming along great.Just a tip for you to prevent shorts later, get some thin heat shrink tubing bit bigger than your wires (as it shrinks to 2/3 the size) to slip on your wires before you solder them & then when they have been soldered, you slide the heat shrink down over the bare wires heat with a lighter or match or heat gun & that will protect them from touching each other or anything else & shorting things out & blowing ant parts.

Hope this makes sense & helps. Keep up the good work & look forward to seeing more.

Chris.

[karsthotep]

I agree on the shrink tube. I don't have any at the moment so the tutorial is without, but it is a always a good idea.   Excellent suggestion. 

[karsthotep]

Now that you have sat on this for a bit lets continue.  Once you have completed the connection of all of the negative leads your next step is to connect all of them to one point.     The way that I did this was to solder a wire from the ring on one TC, to the ring on the other TC, then,   taking one of your zip wires as stated in the first section of the tutorial clip off the female end and strip it back and solder that to the ring.   Like so


As you can also see in the picture above I numbered the LED's on each one of the telepathic circuits.  I did this so I knew what wire needs to be soldered across to the corresponding telepathic circuit.  

On one of your TC's  solder a wire to each of the positive leads.  Make sure you have them long enough for your project.  Again I would recommend you tin each one of your wires to make the soldering easier.  Here you see the progress on one TC.



Now you are going to connect TC 1 to TC 2.  To get the desired rotation syncing between both of your TC's you will need to solder to the opposite LED.  In the picture below you can see, that LED 1 on TC1 is soldered to LED1 on TC2.  LED 2 on TC1 is wired to LED 10 on TC2, and LED 3 on TC1 is wired to LED 9 on TC2,   Continue around the disks wiring to the opposite LED on the corresponding TC.   LED 1 and 6 are going to be the only LED's that correspond directly to each other.    Leave enough of your LED positive lead so you can plug in the Zip wires in the next section of the tutorial



Ok get your soldering done and we will continue  

Karst

[Davros Skaro]

This is looking good & coming along nicely.

Just a thought, wouldn't it be easier & less confusing if on TC2 you numbered the LED's 1- 10 counter-clockwise, where TC1 is numbered clockwise?

Chris.

[karsthotep]

LMAO..it totally would have been easier yes,  had I thought of it .    Regardless of how you number,  the main point was to show people what gets connected to what, but yeah...that is much easier, great suggestion for others who will build this.   

Karst