Would it have been a good idea to include a phone style socket on board when using a standard phone charger to power the cube? The pin and plug idea is easily pulled out. (I noticed an Image somewhere on here with exactly that arrangement) Or is it a soldering issue with something so small?
This would have been the most convenient way to power it but as you have alluded to above, microUSB sockets only come in surface mount form and as we have discovered in the past, most customers that these kits are aimed at don't have the sufficient equipment or soldering skills to solder surface mount components. That's why all our kits aimed at the beginner to intermediate level only use through-hole components.
We are however looking into adding a new DC socket and USB cable instead of the serial cable we currently supply as it seems that the majority of customers that buy this kit are not bothered about reprogramming it and a USB to DC cable would be more robust.
would it be possible to add a sequence in ‘modes’ to light ALL leds at once?
Yes we've already had this idea. The plan is to update the firmware so that it can be placed into a test mode by holding the mode button down whilst powering up the cube.
Using usb as the power source I have found the cube to be quite ‘picky’ about the type used (all mine are genuine power units from current or older phones I have owned but none are less than at least 1.2 to 2amp plus) on at least 1 Samsung supply and 1 apple ipad supply the cube does not work unless you hold your hand near the board... almost like magic it starts to work! Power supply noise issue? More filtering needed on the board, or should I be using the power socket on the board....
I've not actually seen this issue and making it work by touching the board is a weird one. It could suggest a grounding issue but as you said maybe some USB chargers are just too noisy. I'll try and get hold of some different types to replicate the issue.
Finally, possibly an issue, watching the video of the cube working it looks a lot smoother going through the modes, I seem to be getting odd leds that light up where they shouldn’t like in the ‘waves’ mode, 3 or 4 get left alight when moving up and down... odd pixels lag behind on some of the other modes as well... any thoughts?
That's defiantly not normal behaviour, it should work exactly as in the video. It also sounds like a noise issue to me. It's possible that it's related to your previous issue - is it just doing this whilst running off your chargers? Could you try connecting it to a potentially cleaner supply like a PC USB port, or or better still a laptop port to see if this still happens. Also check the soldering on all the 100nF capacitors, especially C8, C10, C11, & C12 and the soldering on the pins of IC U2, U5, U6, U7 & U8 (especially the ground pins).
And finally.. when is the R.G.B morphing colour version coming out....
We get asked about this every now and then. The problem is with an RGB cube everything gets multiplied up and it becomes difficult to come up with a simple design that's not overly expensive (the RGB LEDs alone will be a significant cost), or requires surface mount components such as a more powerful microcontroller or even an FPGA to drive the LEDs. If we can come up with an elegant solution we'll defiantly consider it.
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