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Blinkinlabs / BlinkyTape

LED controller board
Apache License 2.0
67 stars 16 forks source link

External flash idea #10

Open dunk8888 opened 7 years ago

dunk8888 commented 7 years ago

Hi,ime just wondering if its possible to have the blinky tape store the patterns into an external winbond flash unit,and if so would it be much work to implement ? Ime thinking this would be an idea many users would like,that way we can store many patterns to memory.Maybe a good idea to add an example for users who make there own BlinkTape version,ive made a few my self.

cibomahto commented 7 years ago

We have something similar working in the EightByEight badge, which uses the flash chip built into the ESP8266 to store patterns: https://github.com/Blinkinlabs/eightbyeight

The biggest issue with adding it to the current BlinkyTape is that the Atmega32u4 needs 5V to run at 16MHz speed, but basically all serial flash chips require a 3.3V interface. We've made some prototypes using an ARM part to replace the Atmega, and can fit the whole thing into the same size board as the blinkytape... but it still needs some development before we can release.