Running the XJ-A140 With Missing Diodes

[kobra000]

wonderful wonderful run down on the theory and practice of light

http://www.power-sure.com/lumens.htm

here is another sight with lots of lenses and stuff (they even will make custom collimators for you!).
http://www.gaggione.com/specific_cus...limators.xhtml

its the sister site to lednlights.com

Here is a 4 degree led collimator lens for Carclo (never heard of it)...but it looks like it would work on just about any LED with the same size,the sight is in spanish so it has to be translated

http://translate.googleusercontent.c...ZHivs867frjEyg


along with cree and just about every other LED out there (except the planar ones they dont carry collimators for them)..they say that this is the best collimator to use with the SST-90 led
http://www.lednlight.com/index.php?p...ST90#recherche

here is the data sheet on it...perhaps you guys can understand it better than i can! its on the family of collimators and not one particular collimator itself.
http://www.lednlight.fr/downloads_ln...n_CREE_XPG.pdf

only thing is i cant deduce the angle..they say its extremely narrow..but the half angle value at 50% and 10% is 9.7 degrees...i have no idea what that means!..9 degrees isnt anything special..im trying to go under 4 so i wont loose to much light to absorption or scatter loss or aberration or what ever it is.

Man why can physics be easy!

Keith.

[kobra000]

here is a great sight with many collimators for just a few euros each...ive already found a 4 degree one that works perfectly with luxeon rebels,cree or phlatlight SSR-90 sst-90. 4 degrees..man thats pretty tight..i found a 1.7 degree lens but i cant find anywhere that sells it.at all! LLC49R if you guys can search that lens out and see if you can find any sellers..man i would really appreciate it,seriously

thanks
Keith.

http://translate.google.com/translat...3Ddesc%26p%3D2


and here is what i think we all have been waiting for a -3 degree collimator for most LED's,cheap cheap cheap! too.
http://www.ledsupply.com/opk2.php

[kobra000]

hey guys

does anyone have a link to where i can buy the SST-90?..i keep seeing them on ebay for 2000 and 2300 lumens but when i run the manufactuer part number that they supply,it comes back as alot less than what the ebay seller states on sights like mouser and digikey and they are saying that the SST-90 OR SSR90 goes up to 8,000k.when the highest i have seen in its data sheet is 6500k....me thinks they be massively BSing on there listing!
if anyone has a link to an SST-90 SSR-90 LED from a reputable seller id very much appreciate it.

thanks

Keith.

[OzOnE]

Hi,

Yep, there are different "bins" for the LEDs which tell you the min / max rated lumens, and the colour temperature. (as on datasheet page 3 onwards)...

http://www.luminus.com/products/SST-90_2_3543760270.pdf

I'm sure some sellers are sending the lower rated ones, but I've also seen errors on the commercial sites.

Are you going to try making the colour wheel, or do you just want to try "black and white" for now?

I'm still working on the sequencer / driver board btw. I'm just trying to work out how to fit it onto a small PCB.

It's a bit strange about the lumens thing. That site described how I understood lumens years ago, but there is conflicting information which makes me think the calc for lumens includes the human eye's sensitivity to the different colours?

I think the easiest way of estimating lumens is by using a lux meter, and setting the projected image to 1m squared. I think this will give the approx lumens?

Please don't spend too much money on LEDs. Do you ultimately want a colour projector?

OzOnE.

[kobra000]

Ozone

oh yes my goal is to get a operating color projector..but because i have no experience with controllers or micro controllers or programming i have to go with the "low jack" method..i was thinking of trying to do it based on RPM..i ordered a few sheets of Red Green and Blue Film from edmundoptics.com and im going to sit down and make a few wheels with them where Blue is at the start,middle and end (with red and green alternating between them as well)..then run them at various RPMs inside the projector (the "color wheel" motor im using is a re purposed PC fan that i cut the fins off of and some mini DVD's in which i striped the DVD film off of (3 days in Caster oil super Clean!) once i get the color film its simply a matter of cut and epoxy them on in the proper sequence..im using crystal clear epoxy so it wont inhibit the colors any,im also thinking of using a cannibalized CD rom motor as well.(if i can figure out how to power it).cause im thinking it might be faster than the PC fan by perhaps 1000rpm.
its a very quite,cool and cheap setup and i think might work very well if Murphy doesn't start kicking me in the back of the head like he usually does! , once i get the color sequence right then i just ramp up the speed..(any ideas to the proper color sequence is greatly appreciated).. when the color starts looking good..im in the ballpark...i was going to cannibalize a few from other DLP projectors i have but i dont know how to phase them in into the xj-a140. Yeah a lux meter is on the wish list.

i ultimately did end up getting a SST-90 off ebay.(only 28 bucks) and a SST-50 (15 bucks).the seller seemed to no his stuff and gave me the numbers to run. and they checked out.but we will see...i also got some Royal Blue 447nm Luxeon Rebel LED's (1000 lumens at 700ma,i got 3 of them) and some 3 degree collimator lenses from LED supply.com (which oddly enough they said when using non-white light sources the collimator effect will be even tighter than 3 degrees so perhaps i lucked out there) basically im trying to do one with a color wheel..another by trying to best approximate the lasers power and color,and intensity.(if someone could lux meter one of the lasers for me and tell me what kinda lumens range 1 laser has that would help alot!!).
and another where im running a car HID light in it just to see what white light hitting the DLP will do..(is it for a absolute empirical fact that if white light hits the DLP it will only produce a Black and White image?)

yes im very interested in your sequencer,does it get it color change cue's directly from the projector? (and if so how does it interface with the projector) or is it a stand alone type thing?..i have found if you remove the mirror assembly it opens up alot more room in there for custom heat sinks and whatnot..alot more room!

i still got my eye on that CBM-380..man with each color pulsed correctly that thing would be perfect (at least Imo) and who knows perhaps they are going to use that very LED in the next gen projectors..

[OzOnE]

Keith, the sequencer is still in progress. The AVR chip and PCB is on it's way! I'm trying to keep it simple / low cost so I can send one to you.

There are only a few connections the sequencer board will need - pin 1 from IC202 on the driver board, CIDX signal from the ribbon connector on the main board (easier to get to), then 12V and Ground from the PSU.

This will probably need the driver board to be fully modded though? I very much doubt the signals we need are available with only Krazer's ribbon mod.
This will be tricky - I might need to send you a fully modded and tested driver board + sequencer setup?

The sequencer will be made fairly small, so it can be placed inside the projector where the laser block used to be.
It's literally just a small AVR chip (with voltage reg) and three LM350 type LED drivers.

It will not only sequence your RGB LED's, but will also drive them at the correct current too!
That's assuming you don't buy something crazy like the Phlatlight's which need around 8.5 Amps each! (the sequencer will initially only handle around 3 Amps per LED / colour).

As I say, I can test all of this as soon as the parts arrive. This will mean using RGB LED's and finding a way of mixing the colours efficiently though.

Like others have said, I don't think we will get even 25% of the original brightness out of the Ca$io when using LED's.
(and that's when using the brightest one's available, like the expensive PT-120's!).

This might be bright enough for you, or just for a fun project, especially if you don't mind a smaller image size.

I want to warn people about how expensive this type of project can get - there are no guarantees it will ever work as well as you might hope.
Believe me, I've spent enough money on high-power LED's for almost this exact type of project - it was fun, but not exactly practical in terms of brightness.

tbh, I don't think they will use the CBM-380 in a projector (unless in a cheap Chinese projector). It's really designed for lighting, so the colours don't mix properly for projector use.

EDIT: Almost forgot - @kobra: If you still want to try the colour wheel method, the angles listed in my previous post should be fairly accurate...
http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...245#post218245

Don't take too much notice of the angles in the photo, but the listed ones should be close (hopefully). The most important thing is that the colours start in the correct position on the wheel. You probably have a similar pen mark on the centre of your phosphor wheel - this is where the colour should change from Green to Blue (like in the photo)!

btw, I think it will be almost impossible to get a separate colour wheel to match it's speed and sync to the original phosphor wheel!
You might be better off modding the original wheel, or just use RGB LEDs instead.

OzOnE.

[kobra000]

umm guys something wierd is going on..everytime i pull up the forum...most of the words are blacked out like some sort of black ops document and a diagnal slash with the words "censored" are at on in the upper left hand corner....does anyone know what the hecks going on?


Keith.

[kobra000]

ok this "censored" black stripe and almost 90 percent of the text of the forum being blacked out is weird,but i think its something to do with this Pipa thing going on and seems to be a part of google.... even the google logo is blacked out too...if anyone is having this same problem can you tell me how to get rid of it please.

thanks

Keith.

[OzOnE]

Don't worry, it's nothing sinister.

It was part of a huge protest against the new SOPA / PIPA legislation that the government is planning on bringing in.
It was only supposed to be for the 18th, so it should be finished now. Google and Wikipedia were some of the biggest sites which were part of the protest.

These new "laws" will mean that ANY site could be forcibly closed down because of one tiny hint of copyright infringement (or even a simple mistake).

This goes completely against the free and open nature of the Interweb. They didn't have much success shutting down sites like P|rateB*y, so they're obviously trying an overkill method.
The problem is, it will likely affect millions of legal and legitimate sites too, and that just sucks.

For example, it's possible that parts of Wikipedia could be closed down just because a page points to anything mildly dodgy. That's just crazy - the site is the sixth largest site on the 'net and is used by millions every day.

Anyway, rant over. Let's just hope we can stop this bullsh|t from happening. It's just the start of many things to come.

OzOnE.

[kobra000]

yeah really that would suck..i think it would also allow big brother to bully into anyone's they chose life under the guise of "the law" in anyway he wanted to then... its weird how mans fundamentally existence seems to be only to control his fellow man in anyway he can and if cant..he destroys his fellow man anyway he can... (hmm i wonder if the Alterians have a good job market and housing thing going on..i wanna move!)

thanks man i appreciate it


Keith.

[kobra000]

hey guys whatsup


ok so far for the last few weeks i have been hunting down collimators...and have found some pretty good ones...if you want part numbers you should check out the LLC49R 1.7 degree the 207 Polymer Optics 2.5 Degree Reflector and this one which i just need to ask a few questions about the LLC05N..according to LednLight.com it has a -1 degree of collimation at 50% half angle and -1 at 10% half angle (no earthly clue what half angle means)...but i was wondering would this lens be worth experimenting with..i mean its so narrow its on the opposite side of 0...how narrow can ya get? lol.

this week i got my 447nm blue Luxeon Rebels in that suposedly produce 910 lumens at 700ma....here is the sight for them..http://www.luxeonstar.com/Royal-Blue...-LEDs-s/12.htm
i bought the 2nd one down from the top....

now i was told that a mw (as in milliwatt i believe) and a lumen is the same thing..but others are telling me that its different and that these lights really dont put out 910lumens at 700ma..(it says it in the product description 910lumens at 700ma).
what do you say the jury?

also..these things are incredibly small..i mean freaking tiny!! how on earth do you mount them to the core board (on order).and how do you solder them? with a hypodermic needle? im afraid to even touch them for fear of braking them..(that and i know your not supposed to) any help or advice with these little things is greatly appreciated.

also i ordered some 3 degree collimator lenses from LEDSUPPY.COM who say that when used with non white light the beam is even tighter than 3 degrees...think this might be a boon?
most of these lenses are not that expensive..the 3 degree ones i bought from LED supply.com were only 10 bucks total..the leds were 30 cause i bought three of them.(7.XX each)..so i plan to get a few more lenses and start experimenting...who knows perhaps ill mess up and hit that magic number or potion and cure all our projector problems.

any and all information and advice is appreciated.

thanks

Keith.

[kobra000]

oh i forgot to post it....cutter electronics is great for led and led accessories..they have a crapload of collimator lenses.

[kobra000]

check this out guys a Luxeon Rebel at 455nm.....http://www.led-tech.de/en/High-Power...157_49_85.html

the thing says 495mw of power which according to my power calculator http://www.calculator.org/property.aspx?name=power
equals 330.8823529 Lumens ..330lumens x 24 equals 7,920 ...im not sure what the Laser diodes Lumens out put is....even from the high mega pixel cameras it's probably higher than 7,920 ...all the pics i see of them they are extremely bright or perhaps that's just a trick they are playing on my eyes by being so intensely blue and they are really only 200 Lumens or so..i dont know.. ..(445 laser diodes that is..)

just as an idea with im curious to use them in place of the laser diodes...current and voltage seems to be pretty close..specs below
Viewing Angle: 160°
Height: 2.10mm
Width: 4.61mm
Depth: 3.17mm
Emitting Color: royal blue
Housing Color: clear
Nanometer: 455
mW typ.: 275 mW
mW max.: 495 mW
mA test.: 350 mA
mA typ.: 350 mA
mA max.: 700 mA
V typ.: 3.15 V
V max.: 3.99 V
Watt: 1,1 W

it would sure be cheaper than buying Laser diodes and re installing them...these luxeon rebels are only 5 bucks american when ordered 5 or more. and i already have the collimator lenses already used by the Lasers (and they GOTTA be a more narrow angle than any! led lens i could find..


i dont know...im thinking about trying it..
Pros

cheap...5 bucks for these is better than 40 bucks for the Laser Diodes anyday
small,will mount easily on OEM heatsink
low power..right in the projectors power and current curve
high output .....330 lumens each aint half bad..though im not sure what that measurement is at 350 or 700ma
plenty of lenses on hand

Cons
small...hard to solder
takes forever to get them from Germany


what say you the jury?


oh and one more thing..has anyone seen the following type of mounting board..but sold in the states? only place i can find them sold in is Germany,but with a much much weaker LED mounted to them..

any help is appreciated.

LT-1120-1195816502 (1).jpg

[kobra000]

Hey guys how is everyone?

hey does anyone know a simple way of amplifying current?..like a just super simple way?..i was thinking of few Darlington transistor but dont know much about them..or how the circuit needs to be designed to use them....if anyone has some suggestions i really would appreciate it...i dont need much of a amplification,just a few hundred milliamps or so.

thanks
Keith.

[NITAGRO]

Keith and Ozone are doing some great work here. I am happy that i stumbled across this blog and cant wait to see them succeed in getting a working PJ with LEDs thats supposed to work with lasers. I think you guys are way better than the ones at Casio or other big companies.

[kobra000]

Keith and Ozone are doing some great work here. I am happy that i stumbled across this blog and cant wait to see them succeed in getting a working PJ with LEDs thats supposed to work with lasers. I think you guys are way better than the ones at Casio or other big companies.

thanks Nitagro i appreciate that..im about to do full on testing of all my little ideas and whatnot.(diodes,resistors...i really want to do the mod that Ozone came up with but i dont really know if it will apply to a X140)
i even found a much better engine for my color wheel than a PC fan engine..7200rpm brush less motor from a Hard drive...(figured it would give me lots more room to dial in the speed of the color wheel than a 1500rpm PC fan.and i dont have to cut up 1 or 2 of my precious PC fans! plus its very very quiet and very easy to power.)
as soon as i can interface my Handycam between my laptop and the USB capture thingy i got from Hong Kong.ill be uploading pics and videos of my results.

hope everyone is doing ok.

Keith.

[OzOnE]

Yep, thanks Nitagro!

I just wanted to say that I'm still working on the sequencer board. I've been quite busy recently, so I haven't had much time to work on it.

The board has the three constant-current LED drivers on it, and an ATmega328 chip.
With the sense resistors I'm using atm, each LED driver has a maximum current of around 1.5A. This can be adjusted for lower power LEDs.

I've built the board now, but I'm having trouble programming the chip. I was intending to program it via a USB-serial cable to make it easier to re-program in future.
I will use a parallel cable instead, since it's pretty much foolproof (as long as you have a "proper" parallel port on your PC). It just requires a few extra pins to be soldered.

I haven't done much about the optical side of things. I need to get the sequencer working first, then I can play around with some brighter LEDs.

@Keith - I would imagine the laser-less mod would apply to the A140.
The current-sense signals will be at higher voltages etc., but the principle should be the same unless they've changed the PCB design?
Maybe the resistor values might need tweaking a bit?

btw, Please let me know if anyone has a photo of the A140 driver PCB. I can't seem to find one in the Interwebz.

I must admit though, it's not the easiest mod to perform unless you have a fair bit of SMT soldering experience.

I suppose it could be done by soldering small Kynar wires to each point, then using slightly bigger resistors. (tbh, this is probably harder than the way I did it though.)

Also, you could use a small multi-turn pot as the voltage divider. This will allow you to find the best possible "sweet spot" for fooling the PJ into staying on.

I haven't attempted to bypass the colour wheel yet. This will require the Index signal to be generated, so hopefully the sequencer will do this too.

Cheers,
OzOnE.

[NITAGRO]

Thanks awesome to know that it can be applied to A140 coz thats what i will be working on. Do u guys know the difference between 140 and 140V? Do they originally use the same light source or different?

[kobra000]

Ozone..i have quite a few pictures of it..some dude on youtube broke one down and photographed it alot.(i think there might be a link to it earlier in these threads..people here probably hate me for all he links i post lol).but ill be darned if i can find it again.it was in Hungarian..but i did copy his websight (cant read it for crap) and all its pictures..just gotta go through my hard drive and find the pics. i cant find the dudes video on youtube anymore or the sight cause again it was in Hungarian..hopefully i still got them.if not ill break mine down and start snapping pics...i finally got a Digital camera!!

what would the resistance range of the multi turn pot be?..do you have any to recommend?
im still really interested in variable resistors or rheostats for higher power (that's what i was told) to find the sweet spot by dialing up super incrementally but i cant find one that is small enough,or steps up super small increments.idk just a idea.is there such a thing as a digital variable resistor? with led readout?
im still trying to find a Electronic speed control for the Hard drive motor.if anyone has recommendations please let me know.

take care yall

Keith.

ill try your mod on one of my 140's..but is it super necessary to remove pieces from the board or can i "neutralize" them from use somehow?

[kobra000]

Ozone would high res scans of the front and back be better than a high res pic? i figured cause of the mico printing on it.

[kobra000]

darn..i check and that hungarian dude at http://omegalabs.eu/html/kek_lezer.html that had the video of the tore down 140 and all the pics he took it down and all the links give a 404 error...ugh! best sight i found for XJ-a140 pics..gonna have to do it the old fashion way i guess..myself.

[OzOnE]

Hi,

Actually, I'm not sure if the pot would be necessary, or worth the effort - I'm hoping the A140's "current sense" voltage will work the same as the A130. The pot would only be for finding the "voltage sense" value in case it differs a fair bit from the A130. Once the best value is found (so the PJ stays on reliably in all modes), the pot could be replaced with resistors.

The mod will probably work with the resistor values I used for the A130, or something close. Please don't quote me on that though. lol

If you did use a pot, you would still need to solder very small wires to where the resistors normally go, and short across all four current sense signals (then do the same for the voltage sense signals).

I found the resistor divider value for the A130 by looking at the o'scope shots and using an online calc to get close to the voltage needed.

I think with the A140 driver board, we only need to know if it's a hugely different design or PCB code to the A130. I haven't seen a photo of the A140 driver, but I'd put money on it being the same as the A130.

(The laser driver and Phlatlight driver chips probably have plenty of headroom, so all they would need to do for the A140 is to change the current setpoints and the processor firmware).

btw, I tried finding the photos on the Hungarian site using archive.org , but I couldn't find them? Maybe he was asked by Ca$io to take them off?
No problem though, I just need a quick photo snap of the A140 board if anyone can find one?

I searched the forum and didn't find much. "Things", and a few other people showed some photos, but it wasn't confirmed if they were A140's or not?...

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...336#post202336
http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...0+driver+board

@Keith - It will be quite difficult to find or build a driver for the hard drive motor unless you can mod the original PCB for speed control? I think those brushless motors need some fairly accurate three-phase signals to drive them?

A brushless motor chip that I'm quite familiar with is the Allego A8902, which was used in practically all DLP projectors for a long time...

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/data.../0/A8902.shtml

EDIT: btw, the Allegro chip needs a serial data input to control the speed etc. So, we'd be back to needing an AVR or PIC chip again.

tbh, It's going to be a real nightmare trying to sync your motor with the Ca$io without any feedback though - it would be like the DJ mixing challenge from Hell!

What I was thinking of was sacrificing the original phosphor wheel, or making a lightweight colour filter (which is slightly bigger than the original wheel) and sticking it to the original wheel.
That way, you'd have the correct speed / feedback, and you'd only need to move the wheel slightly to shine the beam through your new filter(s) instead.

@NITAGRO - Not sure about the different projector models? I'm assuming they all use a similar laser diode setup, but I don't know what the differences would be without seeing one dismantled.

Split into two posts for clarity (hopefully)...

OzOnE.

[OzOnE]

OK, @Kobra - you've got me thinking about whether the four resistors need to be removed or not... It might be possible to leave them in place, but it means that the output from the DAC will be "fighting" with the output from the feedback opamps. I don't know if this is healthy for the board, the resistor divider would probably need changing, and it might pull down the feedback voltage too much and keep the PJ from staying on?

tbh, there should be plenty more of these board available in the future, so I wasn't too worried about removing the resistors.
Note: The original resistors (R366 to R369) are 1K on my A130 boards.

btw, There are other points on the board which may be easier to solder to (for modding), but it might look quite messy with more wires everywhere...

For instance, if you look at the underside of the board (the "normal" way up, with the processors at the top) - the right-hand sides of R366-R369 are connected directly to the processor pins (ie. the same sides which point towards the black diodes D317-D320.)

You could just remove the resistors, then bridge across these four points instead. This combined signal will be your "current sense" INPUT to the processor.
You then just need to solder a wire link from Pin 2 of the DAC IC110 (or the right-hand pad of the missing R187) and this new "current sense" signal.

The voltage sense signals are taken from the laser bank outputs (ribbon connector CN301), but they then go through resistor dividers near to the processor pins.
I can't see an easier place to bypass these because the relevant resistors are just as close together as the small caps are. However...

The laser bank anode outputs go into R109 (underside) and R110, R111, R112 (top side).

The "lower end" of each resistor divider is then formed by R126, R129, R130, R133 (all top side). The opposite end of these resistors are simply Grounded.

I normally leave R109-R112 in place for the mod because they are fairly high value (around 20K I think, I haven't tested them off-board yet).

The only way around this fine soldering is to start cutting tracks: not exactly ideal!

OzOnE.

[OzOnE]

Right, I finally made time to finish building the sequencer yesterday...

I had the usual few hours of frustration at first - I couldn't get the chip to program for a few hours (needed extra caps), I think I fried the first AVR chip, and then I couldn't get the sequencer to work properly (it wouldn't enable the Red LED because it wasn't seeing the falling edge of the Laser Bank ENable).

I now realize that when you set the standard interrupt pins on these AVR chips to look for "Any logical change", it means exactly that! ie. It will generate an interrupt every time the pin changes state, but it seems you can NOT then test to see if the pin is actually high or low! (at least I don't think you can). This might be great for frequency counting, but not so great for this project.

Anyway, the solution was simple. You need to use the PCINT type interrupt instead which just means changing a few lines of code. This then allows you to check whether the pin was high or low.

So, the board is basically working! The connection to the projector couldn't really be easier. It's just two wires for CIDX and Laser Bank ENable, then the Ground and Power (12V) wires to the PSU.

I currently have it running some LEDEngin LEDs and it is driving all three colours (RGB) in perfect sync with the phosphor wheel / Red Phlatlight.
The 12V PSU voltage from the projector actually isn't high enough for the voltage drop of these LEDs (around 16V), so they're nowhere near their full brightness atm.

The Phlatlights have a much lower voltage drop (they're more like a giant LED made from many standard LEDs in parallel), so it should be possible to drive them from this board using 12V from the PJ.
(It can currently only manage 3 Amps per colour, but I'll give it a try later anyway).

Note: This is all on an A130, and it's still necessary to carry out the "Laser free" mod first. The original phosphor wheel isn't bypassed yet either (that's the next thing to do).
I'm still confident (/hopeful) that these mods will also work on an A140.

I haven't tried shining the RGB array into the PJ yet because I'm using my old DIY module which is too big to fit in there.
I'll see if I can sneak a peek at the full colour image by routing the RGB array via some mirrors or something, then figure out how I'm gonna fit my Blue and Green Phlatlights!

btw, It's completely possible to upgrade the sequencer for driving much higher current LEDs. It's a simple enough circuit.
You can always use an external PSU of course.

I'll try to get my crappy camera to hold a charge and get a video uploaded too.

OzOnE.

[kobra000]

dang Ozone..your really shucking and jiveing on that thing....I salute you!

you said the pj is capable of doing 3 amps per color...now thats the projector power supply or something different? cause im wondering if you can combine the power for all three colors to get a total of 9 amps (im itching to try my SST-90 and color wheel,just got it built the other day,had to use a speed control from Hobbyking for RC stuff to control the HD motor..simple enough only 8 bucks, and smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll! but takes forever to get here from china!
i really like your idea,but im just not that hip on programming and circuit building..most of what i do electrically is just repairing stuff...but im still learning and open to new ideas..have you got a circuit diagram that i could study for this sequencer? with symbols and whatnot?

love your work man..and i cant wait for the pics...im still having trouble scanning the parts you needed pics of my scanner's drivers are completely out dated and wont work with XP for some reason ( service pack 3 messes everything up man games everything!) and my darn CD key for VISTA just crapped out on me..(vista sucks so much i wont even spend the 10 bucks for a new key!) so i have to wait till my windows 7 for builders comes here from newegg,hopefully i can get it going that way.

sally forth young gents!

Keith.