The Peggy Debacle

Once the Peggy 2.0 board came in, we immediately began soldering on the LEDs (25 x 25) and other components, including transistors, resistors, and the microcontroller. Each LED was tested to ensure that all connections were alright. The Peggy would be programmed in Arduino, a platform neither of us have used before. Here is a picture of the board:

However, the debacle occurred when we went to test the Peggy board. We ran sample code given on the product's website whose purpose was to turn on all of the LEDs. Only 4 columns of LEDs actually lit while the current got increasingly higher and the microcontroller got extremely hot. We pursued several methods of determining the issue with the board. First, we double check each of the components soldered onto the board. Then, we de-soldering several LEDs that could possibly be causing the problems. Additionally, we tested the multiplexers and LED drivers to see if they functioned individually. Despite all of our efforts, the Peggy board would still not function properly and in the interest of time (since we spent over a week trying to fix the problems!) we decided to switch to using the monoboards.

Stay tuned as we switch gears to using the monoboards and begin testing!