New
#431
For me my level shifter worked out perfect. It had 4 lines and I had 4 LEDs, Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. And running them from 5V meant they were nice and bright, with no worries of burning out a GPIO on my Pi. A pack is the way to go, I'm pretty sure your going to find your calculated value will light up the LED, but it won't be as bright as you want it. My Yellow LED seemed to be not as bright as the others so I lowered its resistor. My LED's will burn out long before any of the Darlington transistors will. So if I did go too low, it just means replacing an LED and resistor. I have lots of spares or both.
Yeah, mine is just a single LED just so I know that the power was triggered.
I just found out today that there is an electronic repair/hobby store around the block where I live. The front entrance is kind of small but the store is spacious inside. They sell stuffs in small quantities repacked in ziplocks. Kind of a bit pricey ($2, $3, $4, etc.) if you compare with packs that you can buy online. But the thing is, more than half in the pack is almost useless if you think about it. On that store, you can buy what you only need.
I was able to get some pen size heat shrink tubings, a pair of momentary switch, a small tub of soldering paste and a "third-hand" soldering accessory that I always wanted to buy for cheap. They also have some resistors but they are out of what I need. They also have soldering tips, tinner, etc. If I only learned about it earlier, I wouldn't have to buy a new soldering iron. Haha..
(Walking distance from my place).
Heat shrink one size or more smaller than that may come in handy also. It only shrinks down so small. One trick, if you don't have what you need, as in too big. Is to put a bit of electrical tap on, then shrink over that.
If you solder two small gauge wires end to end in "might" not shrink down small enough to grab and not slid around. I probably should have recommended something a little smaller first time around. At least its easy for you to get a few different sizes. Once you have it, you think of other uses other than electronics. Its good for putting on the end of rope so it doesn't fray etc. The ends of shoe laces if you've cut them down shorter etc. Some times I buy new laces for my boots only to find they are way too long and I end up cutting some off so I don't trip over it. I could just tie a knot in the end but if you want it too look nice, heat shrink will fix them up nicely.
Hey Jack @caperjack, I have a question for you? Are you running the Drum Hat and Speaker pHat together on the pHat Stack? The pHat Stack configurator https://pinout.xyz/phatstack is flagging BCM 21 PIN 40 as a conflict? Just wondering if you had to do anything special to make that work? Or if its even an issue?
EDIT: Found this, https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/...bitty-beat-box which I believe is what you did. So I guess its not an issue?
Yeah, my plan is to pull that one pin out of the male header before I solder it to the pHat Stack. That will make it unconnected. It's just a reset PIN for the Drum pHat. A software reset. If things change and I need it I'll just put it back in and solder it. I was going to use a Drum pHat, and Touch pHat together but they both use the same i2c address. =(
Aside from the one pad that doesn't work, how are those drum hat pads sensitivity wise? Do you have to touch right in the middle? Also will a light touch work?