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last edited: September 22, 2004

Building a MiniPOV (For the student)  

  1. Aqcuire all the parts (shown here in a plastic bag), a soldering iron of reasonable quality, rosin core electronics solder, angle cutters (not shown), and preferably something that can hold the PCB while you solder. A vise or 'handy hands' tool (on the left) will be fine.
  2. Lay out the parts on the table, identify all of them. Clockwise from the top: 8 LEDs, battery holder, 2 batteries, switch, 14-pin microcontroller, matching socket, PCB, and 8 resistors.

  3. Place the PCB in the holder so that the correct side (shown here) is facing up. Bend all the resistors into U-shapes and insert them into the proper holes. There is no orientation to resistors and they are all the same type. Bend the leads out a little so that when you flip the board over they don't fall out.

  4. Flip the board over, as shown, and solder all the leads. Then clip them close to the board using the angle cutters

  5. Turn the board back over, place the socket as shown, with the notch on the same end as the imprinted "U" on the board. Place the switch also. Turn the board over and solder both to the PCB. You don't have to clip any of the leads unless they seem too long.

  6. Next is the LED placement. LED's are polar, and if they are put in backwards they won't light up. Looking down at the LED you will see one side is flattened. The flat side is the side that is closest to the board edge when placing the LED. That side is also the side that, if the LED is clear, you can see a 'cup'.

    Place all 8 LEDs, making sure they all oriented correctly!
  7. Turn over the board, solder the LEDs, and the battery pack wires, taking care to connect the red wire to the + terminal and the black wire to the - terminal. Clip the LED leads close to the board, as well as any excess wire.

  8. Place the microcontroller in the socket, matching up the notches. Install both AA batteries. Use hot glue, epoxy, double sided tape, etc, to attach the PCB to the battery holder. You're done! Turn it on!
 
Building a MiniPOV (for the instructor)  

You'll need to decide what to have the MiniPOV display and then program that into the microcontrollers you give out. Download the asm source code. Try to understand it. The image map is stored at the bottom. You'll also have to change the value in the loop that defines the number of lines in an image. This is defined at the top in IMAGESIZE. Then you have to make sure that the timer code jumps to your imagemap. Vers 1.0 jumps to EC so change that if you're going to name your imagemap something else.

Once you've done that, use MPASM and a PIC programmer to program all the 16F630. (Start with one, test it fully, then go on to the next) In case your programmer can't read the fuses from the HEX file, they should be: MCLR off, Internal RC with no clockout, code protect off, EE protect off, powerup timer, no brownout detect, no watchdog timer.

The button doesnt do anything yet, feel free to use it to change messages/images, or something.