Hooray! You have a kit! Here's how to make it into something nifty.

Important Note: If you have an older MiniPOV kit (say, pre 5/2005) and it doesn't say v2.1 on the PCB, or theres no "sensor" socket, you have an original MiniPOV and you should use the older instructions. The part numbers are the same but the firmware and placement are slightly different.

Important Note #2: Rushing to get your PCB files in by a deadline is not a good idea, there is a typo in the silk screen of the v2.1 PCBs. If you're planning to use the sensor socket, be aware that the +3V pin ' +' is marked 's' and vice versa. this has been fixed in 2.1a

There are a few tools that are required for assembly. None of these tools are included. If you don't have them, now would be a good time to borrow or purchase them. They are very very handy whenever assembling/fixing/modifying electronic devices! I provide links to buy them, but of course, you should get them whereever is most convenient/inexpensive. Many of these parts are available in a place like Radio Shack or other (higher quality) DIY electronics stores.

	Soldering iron. Personally, I like the WES50 (now the WES51) and the other ~$100 Wellers. One with temperature control and a stand is best. A conical or small 'screwdriver' tip is good, almost all irons come with one of these. A low quality (ahem, $15 radioshack) iron may cause more problems than its worth. YMMV.	Buy a WES51 from Allspec
	Solder. Rosin core, 60/40. Good solder is a good thing. Bad solder leads to bridging and cold solder joints which can be tough to find. Dont buy a tiny amount, you'll run out when you least expect it. 1lb spools are a minimum.	Buy 1lb spool from All Electronics
	Multimeter/Oscilloscope A meter is helpful to check voltages and continuity.	(Anyone have a good suggestion for an inexpensive meter?)
	Flush/diagonal cutters. Essential for cutting leads close to the PCB.	Buy flush cutters from All Electronics
	Desoldering tool. If you are prone to incorrectly soldering parts.	Buy a solder sucker from AllElectronics
	'Handy Hands' with Magnifying Glass. Not absolutely necessary but will make things go much much faster.	Buy a handy tool from All Electronics
	Good light. More important than you think.

Check to make sure your kit contains the following:

Picture	Name	Description	Quantity
	IC1	ATtiny2313 Microcontroller	1
	IC1*	20 Pin Socket	1
	R10	1/4W 5% 10K resistor	1
	R1-9, R20-22	1/4W 5% 47 ohm resistors	11
	U1	2 AA Battery Case with switch	1
	D1-8	Red oval LED	8
	X1	DB-25 male connector w/solder cup connectors	1
	PCB	Silkscreened PCB	1

 

Learn how to solder with tons of tutorials!

Don't forget to learn how to use your multimeter too!

	Get yer soldering iron heated up to ~700deg C. Put the circuit board into the handy tool. You're ready to go!
	The first part to solder is the parallel port plug. It slips onto the edge of the board. Make sure its snug against the edge of the board, not crooked, as the plug will be strained otherwise. Also make sure its lined up right with the pads.
	Heat a pad with with the iron for a few seconds, then dip the solder between the pad and socket-pin to solder them together. Repeat for all 25 pads. X-pert bonus: If you are sure you'll want to take the DB-25 off sometime later (to make it lighter or smaller or something), only solder the pins that go to the chip (check the schematic or look at the traces on the PCB)...that'll make it easier to desolder later. If you have more than one kit, or an Atmel programmer, you don't need the DB-25 since its only for reprogramming the chip. Super X-pert bonus: If you don't even want to have to desolder the few pins for the DB-25 you can try 'press-fitting' the DB-25 onto the PCB and programming it like that. When you're done programming, just slip it off.
	Next is the PCB socket. Make sure the socket matches the picture: theres a little notch at one end that matches the picture.
	Press the socket into the PCB with a finger while soldering two corner pins
	Next is the 10K resistor. Bend the leads near the resistor, and slip them through the holes in the board, while holding the resistor next to the PCB, bend the leads on the other side so it stays in place.
	Solder it in and then clip the leads near the board.
	Next are the 47 ohm resistors. Repeat the above.
	Now solder in the LEDs. LEDs are polar, and if they are placed backwards they dont work. If you look carefully you'll note that one leg of the LED is slightly longer than the other (positive). You can also look into the LED and see the triangular 'cup' (negative). Make sure the negative side is flush with the edge of the PCB.
	Next the battery pack. The red wire connects to the pin marked with a +. The black wire connects to the pin marked with a -. Insert the microcontroller into the socket. Note that the chip has a little notch at the end, which should match the picture (which should match the socket). Don't put it in backwards, the chip can be permanently damaged this way.

Put 2 AA batteries into the holder and turn it on. The microcontroller is pre-programmed to blink each LED in order. If one of the LEDs doesn't turn on or off, check the soldering connections and make sure its not in backwards (you'll have to desolder it). If -none- of the LEDs turn on, use the multimeter to verify that there is 3VDC between the red and black wire on the battery pack, and that the microcontroller is in right also heck to make sure that the LEDs aren't flipped.

Tip: If you bought a kit, the LEDs are oval which means they can be placed closer to each other. This will make the image smaller but can improve short-range visibility. I bent these after soldering them, so they're a bit crooked. If you shape the LEDs before soldering you can probably get tighter spacing.

Now that its assembled, you can reprogram the chip with persistance of vision code, to display custom messages & images. To program the chip you will need a computer with a parallel port (basically, any PC).

If you're running Windows:

1. Download the latest WinAVR package from sourceforge
2. Install the software
3. Download the zip of example source code
4. Uncompress it somewhere convenient
5. Check to make sure WinAVR installed properly: open a command window and cd to the directory where you expanded the source code files. Run make all. There should be a lot of gibberish, not something like 'make' is not recognized <etc>
6. Run dir and verify that there is a file called minipov.hex
7. Plug in the MiniPOV into the parallel port, and turn on the battery pack(it must be powered to be programmed even if its looking like its powered off of the parallel port)
8. Run make program-minipov, this will start the programming procedure. If you get errors such as avrdude: can't open device 'giveio' or avrdude: failed to open parallel port then you'll need to grant yourself parallel-port permissions. Do this by running install_giveio.bat, which is in C:\WinAVR\bin\, this will give you permission to access the parallel port. You only have to do this once. Try running make program-minipov again!

You can also program the hex files using avrdude-gui.exe, which is installed with WinAVR:

1. Under the -p Device menu, select ATtiny2313
2. Under the -c Programmer menu, select DT006
3. Under the -P Port menu, select LPT1 (unless you happen to have multiple printer ports)
4. Under the Flash section, click Write and Verify. For the file, click ..., look in the directory where you previously typed make, and find the hex file you want to program
5. Click Execute!

If you're running Linux (or another unix-like OS): (from Steve Lacy's page)

1. Install the latest versions of flex, bison, byacc, gcc and gcc-c++ for your distribution using whatever tools are appropriate (emerge, apt-get, rpmfind, etc.)
2. Download the latest binutils source distribution and compile it using:
   # ./configure --target=avr --program-prefix="avr-"
   # make
   # make install
   In the binutils directory
3. Download the latest gcc source distribution and compile it using:
   # ./configure --target=avr --program-prefix="avr-" --enable-languages=c
   # make
   # make install
   In the gcc directory
4. Download the latest avr-libc distribution and install it:
   # ./doconf
   # ./domake
   # ./domake install
5. Your avr-gcc environment is ready to go. A lot of stuff is under /usr/local/avr.
6. Install avrdude
7. Download the zip of example source code
8. Uncompress and cd into the source directory.
9. Run make and verify that avr-gcc was found and everything compiled all happy (there should be a bunch of .hex files now)
10. Plug in the MiniPOV into the parallel port, and turn on the battery pack (it must be powered to be programmed even if its looking like its powered off of the parallel port)
11. Run make program-minipov, this will start the programming procedure. You may have to edit the Makefile and change the parallel port from 'lpt1' to whatever is appropriate for your distribution (i.e. /dev/ttyP0)

Note: if you are trying this out with a new microcontroller (i.e. not from a kit) you'll need to burn the fuses first, otherwise it won't work right and might not be programmable. Run make burn-fuse while the minipov is powered and connected to the parallel port.

Note 2: When plugged into the parallel port, the LEDs may light up oddly or dimly, this is normal.

Now its time to put a custom image into the POV toy. Using your favorite text editor, open up the file mypov.c in the downloaded firmware directory.

Near the top of the file is a table called image[]. Each entry in the table is an 8 bit number (which is displayed in binary: B8(00000000) through B8(11111111). The 'B8()' just indicates to the compiler its in binary not in decimal). When the microcontroller starts up, it basically goes through the table and uses the value to determine whether each LED is on or off. For example, if the value is 01010101, then all the odd LEDs are on. If the value is 00000011, then the bottom 2 LEDs are on. After drawing the desired design on graph paper, go through each line and edit image[], adding or removing lines to make the table the right length. The table can be more than 500 lines long. (Hint: the easiest way I've found to do this is to copy enough 'B8(00000000),' lines to fit the size of your design, then enter in the 1's in insert/overwrite mode, which almost all text editors have) Now count how many lines you've got and put that number into the variable imagesize (which is defined right below the image[] array) Thanks to suggestion by David C., I have fixed it so it automatically sets imagesize to be correct. Thanks!

Compile mypov.c by opening a command window, going to the directory and typing in del mypov.hex (or rm mypov.hex) and then make mypov.hex. This should create a new mypov.hex which you can upload to the MiniPOV (by typing make program-mypov)