Completed controller board

Still needs the hardware testing and software writing.

First column of LEDs

Face board painted black

Temporary workbench in kitchen

Micro board connector detail

Column drivers and micro on part completed controller board

Board Wiring Detail

Board wired up

LED board cut to size

Forth embedded board via USB serial

Terminals

My normal serial terminal program (ZTerm) doesn’t appear to allow manual control of DTR+RTS (as far as I can tell). I, however, need this control for a ByVac BV511 LPC ARM + Forth board http://www.byvac.com/bv3/index.php?route=product/product&path=20&product_id=49 which uses them to control the reset and program-enable lines. (I first saw the BV511 sold on ebay.co.uk by ByVac).

I tried to install minicom via MacPorts, but for some reason it wouldn’t set up (via sudo minicom -s)

Anyway, found CoolTerm, which allows things like manual RTS & DTR line control and also line delay.

http://freeware.the-meiers.org/ (There is both a Mac and Windows version).

Working with the BV511

CoolTerm was set up to 115200, 8N1.

I also set the end of line delay to a huge number (50) to allow the target to compile when pasting in text.

Copied some I/O code and got the on-board led to toggle that’s on I/O port 0.31 ... very cool (if somewhat simple!)