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Blinken Button for Beginners Version 2

Marcus — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:44:24 +0000

You may know the Blinken Button for Beginners Kit. And you may know that I am quite out of stock at the moment. But things are changing: The new Blinken Button Kits have arrived!

The best: The now come in red or green (Jimmy liked it – so I added this option) and I got plenty.

This new Blinken Button version sports some enhancements over the old version which came from contribution, wishes and recommendations:

First of all they now come in red or green – more options for you!
They include built in self test to give you a better chance to find the nasty solder bridges.
They now have an optional SPI connector to use them as simple 8×8 displays.
The PCB is now white (don’t know how this is an advantage – but I like it more so I sell it here as an advantage).

The idea to add an SPI interface cam from Johannes and Gabe. In a unbelievable stunt they hacked the SPI connection in the old version the same night they bought the kit – and added the implementation straight away. So thank them that this it´s now a standard feature. And be sure to check out their spectacular Game Of Life on Blinken Button too!

Please apologize that I did not find enough time to prepare packages – so they will restock in my shop in the next few days. But if you really want one just send me a mail and I will restock on demand (i.e. send you one or some). And if you don’t dare to solder it on your own come to the Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin. I will offer some SMT soldering classes with Blinken Buttons for Beginners there.

Blinken Button revisited

Marcus — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:45:40 +0000

It was a bit quiet in the last months here at Interactive Matter. For a reason!

One happy day in fall 2010 Mitch and Jeff convinced me to prepare some Blinken Buttons for Beginners Kits for a SMT soldering workshops at the 27c3 in Berlin. I was happy that they did! And I suffered massively because they did. Preparing 50 kits, ordering material, reworking How-To’s, packaging packages and packaging my suit case cost me a lot of time (the later was not that complicated). But in the end I was prepared, got everything packed. Unfortunately I completely forgot any marketing material. You know on conferences there are these kind of hosting space called walls where you are supposed to bring up some content on paper, publishing it with stickers. So I had to come up with an impromptu solution. But fortunately with Mitch’s help I could gather all necessary technology and created this wonderful ad shown above.

And best of it all Hackable Devices and Interactive Matter stumbled over each other and made a distribution deal. So as soon as I have restocked again you can get the Blinken Buttons directly from Hackable Devices.

It was big fun! We soldered so may kits (thanks to anyone who bought one). And as always stated by me SMT is easy to solder. After some short introduction and showing some tricks of the trade everybody was able to solder it. We even had some complete soldering beginners who never soldered before, choosing the Blinken Button as first kit! Perhaps more for the look than for the technology. But they did it and they did it well and returned happy with their Blinken Buttons. Some guys even started at the conference to hack the software by adding a SPI interface to it! Cool!

And spending some days with Mitch was a great experience too! Watching him teach and seeing his approach to all this DIY hardware stuff helped me so much. So special thank to Mitch & Jeff again, without your help this great success of Interactive Matter have never been possible!

Blinken Buttons for Beginners – a SMT Beginners Kit

Marcus — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:57:25 +0000

You all know the Blinken Button Kit (aka Space Invaders Button). One of the biggest flaws of this kit is that it is not really a beginners kit. But with the help of Jeff (really big thanks for that) I was able to convert it to a perfect SMT beginners kit. The design was drastically simplified to make it easy to solder, while maintaining the original functionality.
So head over to the Blinken Button for Beginners in the shop to grab yours, or if you allread got one, check the Blinken Button for Beginners How To to assemble it.
The original Blinken Buton design has undergone some changes to make the desing more SMT beginners-friendly:

Massively reduced number of components (removing the Arduino comatibility).
Very clear component marking.
All resistors and capacitors use a 1206 packaging for ease of assembly.
Enhanced LED-Matrix footprint for easier testing.

The most important change was to improve the component marking and using hand-solder-friendly 1206 components. It now has a clear marking which component goes where and for the ATMega orientation:

The whole kit can be soldered by SMT novice and is easily testable – so if you was looking for a SMT beginners kit this is the one for you!

The LED matrix footprint has clear markings which pin is an Anode (square pins) or Cathode (round pins) to enhance testability. It is easy to ensure that you have a working design before you solder the LED matrix to reduce the probabilty of errors.

BMP085 Barometric Pressure Sensor Breakout Boards arrived!

Marcus — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:56:46 +0000

You may know that I played around a bit with the BMP085 barometric pressure sensor. Now I am proud to announce that the BMP085 barometric pressure sensor is available as breakout board in the Interactive Matter Shop.

The BMP085 Breakout Board is a limited offer. I just got some at hand and supplies last as long as supplies last and are gone after they are gone. They come completely pre-assembled and tested.

Blinken Button – The LED Matrix Button Kit

Marcus — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:45:06 +0000

Interactive Matter proudly present the first Interactive Matter SMT Kit
The Blinken Button!

The Blinken Button is a kit for a 8×8 LED Matrix button (the jacket one). It is based on the Space Invaders Button you may already know.

The original Blinken Button Kit has been discontinued – check the Blinken Button for Beginners Kit instead.

History

The Blinken Button is a direct descendant of the Space Invaders Button. It is optimized to be an entry level SMT kit. It did not really work out to be total entry level, since all the electronics is behind the display, which makes it a great gift or fashion accessory, but if you made a mistake in soldering – there is no way to fix it (easily). So very intensive testing is needed. But if this is not your first kit and you already did some mistakes, you can handle it.
It is basically Arduino compatible. But it comes without the Arduino code out of the box. This is something that will be enabled quite soon.

The need for a name

Coming up with a name was the most complicated thing. I positively did not wanted to use the name Space Invaders Button. I do not want to fight with Atari or whoever got the name now.
Using then name 64 Pixels Button was something I tried and it really made it onto the PCB – but Alex had concerns that it interferes with his 64 Pixels project. And he was right.
So the name was Blinken Button. It is so for three reasons: First my girlfriend calls it like that anyway, second it is basically just some Blinkenlights and third it is a homage to the CCC Blinkenlights, I really enjoyed some years ago.

The Future

It will not stop here.

First the Arduino compatibility will be explored. This will most probably work out with the current version with an software update.
There is an USB version planned, with much more control for users who do not have an AVR programmer.

Interactive Matter goes Kit

Marcus — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:01:00 +0000

The questions for kits grow stronger and stronger in the comments. Therefore I am happy and proud to announce that Interactive Matter starts selling kits. The first will be the Space Invaders Button. The first round of prototypes has been packaged and already shipped:

Soon we will add order forms and how to descriptions for all the kits we will offer – so stay tuned.

All kits will be more or less SMT-only. So this is a great way to get started with SMT. To make choosing easier any kit will be labeled with ‘Beginner’ or ‘Advanced’ or ‘Expert’, to reflect the necessary skill level and the tools you need.

Most kits on offer will be first offered as pre-production or prototype runs. Therefore expect a delayed delivery (some of the stuff is even not on order yet). But these staues will be included in the kit description. So thanks for your patience. But to speed up the process leave a comment which project you want to see as a kit. So I can estimate what has to prepared.

And if you do not like kits at all there will be also some pre-assembled stuff on offer. It is going to be very interesting – at least for me.

Interactive Matter: The first year!