Inexpensive External Interface is Working

[markpardoe]

Thanks Scott and Andy for your help.

I will try to order a couple of bare ended adaptors from Janice and possibly a terminated one while I'm at it.

Happy new year to you all.

Mark

[electronguy]

Attention all DIY Procyon interface builders:

I believe I've found the source of my frustrations re: the DC-DC converter. After numerous trials, I decided to look at the raw output from the Procyon on my DMM and noticed that even with no signal being sent, the channels had about 1.6V of AC noise riding on them. Since the optocoupler's input was not forward-biased, the input looked like an effective open-circuit. I made the assumption that the LED in the optocoupler would properly terminate the Procyon unit, but apparently not.

In order to prevent noise problems when building your interface circuits, I highly recommend placing a 270 ohm (or around that--it's not critical) resistor between the common anode output of the Procyon unit and the corresponding red, green, or blue output. This provides a path for the stray currents to flow and a viable interfacing solution should be on its way shortly (before I go back to university on Monday).

Thanks for your patience--my projects are harder to work on with my 'scope being out of commission

Cheers,
--Scott

[CraigT]

Scott,

Congratulations on some awesome work.

I will confess that I have been sitting in the wings waiting to hear what sort of results you get from 'ambient entrainment lighting' before I fire up my soldering iron and invest in the bits for a large scale display.

Thanks so much for being the 'guinea pig' and sharing your experience along the way.

Cheers,
Craig

[~Brainwave~]

Hi Scott,

This is really interesting work. Much appreciated - thanks.

Regards,

Mike