My very first interaction with this button pad happen when i tried to make a mini Monome clone for Arduino. Monome ( http://monome.org ) is an interactive music device built to interact with computer for music and sound manipulation. As nice as the device is, they cost between $800 and $1400. I found somebody who built a 4x4 replica and kept the budget around $150! I decided to try and duplicate his project using his help, allowing me to further my knowledge and do more complicated things with my Arduino. Although since then he has removed the post from his site, this is originally where the whole project was posted: http://www.upwardnotnorthward.com/
So having a shopping list mostly found on the Spark fun website, I purchased all the parts and attempted to assemble my own copy of the clone. I was able to find all the parts and bits for around $100, using some parts I already owned. Using the directions i was unsuccessful. Somehow the single pin used to control two different PWM ( Pulse-width Modulation ) chips could not be used on two pins. I decided to use a relay to switch between the two different chips, therefor I could send each one a command, then change to the other chip and give the other a command. However the relay could not operate at the speeds i needed ( change every one millisecond ), so once again I was unable to complete the project. I was able to get this far with the described setup;
Seen in the video, I simply displayed how I had half of the buttons lighting up. Only half worked because I was only able to make one chip work, and each chip controlled one side of the button pad. The buttons turned on and off in a refreshing type manner because I was controlling the refresh rate with a Potentiometer. Although going in a seemingly good direction, I was unable to complete the project, let alone get the button aspect working using the approach shown to me. The original creator of the replica was able to make it function, but even through long De-bugging and changing everything, i was still not able to get the full lights working on the button pad.
After reading a new thread over at the Arduino.cc website, i found out that a member named John_Ryan was working on a "dual core" Arduino, where he would put two Arduinos on one board and use a common Resonator and some DIP switches to be able to make both Arduino communicate to a computer using one connection. the whole project started off as a breadboard prototype, and became a full PCB! John_Ryan was even nice enough to send me one of his boards to test, which I did, and can say with certainty that it worked very well, and I really liked the idea! Considering that making Arduino dual core raised the PWM pins from six total pins to Twelve total pins, I had enough PWM pins to make the button pad work! I decided to once again try and make the button pad work using John_Ryan's great idea. After hooking everything up, I once again encountered problems. I could not even find out what was wrong also. I am thinking perhaps the shared resonator lead to these problems, but i will never know probably until post college. Using John_Ryan's idea i was only able to get this far:
As you can see, the board could not work properly, for the color would bleed off into the next row of buttons which were controlled by a completely different Arduino chip! That is why it was so strange because although the board was connected using the resonator, the chips themselves were not connected leaving me to wounder why the color would bleed into the next set of rows. At that point i have not been able to complete anymore since then. As i have some free time opening soon i might be able to start working on the button pad again perhaps, hopefully with more results this time! You can be sure i'll post any updates as soon as I do anything. If you have any suggestions to me about how to get this working ( with Arduino ) or would like help in starting to make your own, please feel free to contact me at rfmaster93@gmail.com.
