So I added a connector, plugged it to a controller and nothing happened.

I had a moment of doubt, maybe the whole thing was faulty.

Then I look closely at the first led of the chain, and one of the pin wasn't correctly soldered.

I fixed it, plugged it again, and boom ! \o/

Only an hour to finish the placing of the leds.
I'm getting better :)

It's ready for the soldering on the hot plate.

90 min later, half of the leds are in place. That's 324.

And 324 leds to go :)

First, I made a jig to align the pcb and the stencil reliably while applying the solder paste.

The pcbs arrived this morning.
They're quite intimidating.

I have some other (paying:) work early afternoon then I'll be free to work on it.

Hopefully, I'll have it done for by the end of the day :)

That's a lot of leds...

I did not realize when I posted that the video was that bad (it was late).
So, I made a (I think) better one.

I think I'm done with this prototype, I'll start working one the bigger version, maybe 11x50.

And we have clock ! \o/

This means I will most likely design the definitive pcb during the week end :)

I ended soldering the last pcb with leds from the same batch.
As expected, no more brightness discrepancy. It was worth it \o/

The code will wait :)
#LedMatrix #ws2182b #esp8266 #pcb

I change the failing led, and some other but I still had some bad 'twinkling'.
I suspected (and hoped) the cause was bad leds as I had salvaged them from the previous prototype, they might have suffered.
So I solder another one with new leds, and no more twinkling. It works just fine!

(there is some brightness difference, but is because there is two kind of chips, the newer are brighter).

I'm really happy with this. I'm going to write some code to display stuff then It'll be time to think about the real version :)

Pcb arrived this morning so I took the afternoon off to solder and play :)
Soldering went fine,, but I'm glad I invested in a small hot plate few months ago.
Apparently, only 1 faulty led, I have to fix.

Here we go again. With the correct layout this time (I hope :)

pcb arrived \o/

Damn that's compact.
I knew it (I designed them) but seeing them is something else. That's way smaller than everything I've made before.

So, it's soldering time !

I ended making a smaller version, to lower the cost of a prototype I'm not completely confident I'll be able to build.

Also that version is symmetrical, I like it better :)

Next step in 3 weeks, when it'll come back from the manufacturer :)

This is quite compact pcb :)
Obivously freerouting did not successfully create a routing, but I can't really blame it.
I'll do it by hand tomorrow.