Election Meter Using Giant ShiftBrite

Overview

The project uses 32 ShiftBrite RGB LED modules to create a giant red/blue bar graph for displaying the electoral vote.

Details

The parts that came along with the ShiftBrite modules include a Cubloc CB405 with Quick Start 1000 board, an ACODE-300B Bluetooth module, two CSG-4M LED numerical displays, a cheap Bluetooth USB dongle, and an LM1086 3.3V regulator for powering the ACODE module. The code that has been used for file storage and random scripting was running on a small 400MHz Linux server since Linux seems to recognize immediately all the common chipsets.

The ACODE module was plugged into a USB-RS232 converter and power as the USB-RS232 converter was connected at 9600bps on COM4. Until the serial configuration terminal appeared, the reset button on the ACODE carrier board should be held. By typing the letter and pressing Enter, the menu items can be selected.

The ACODE Reset line has been added with a 10K pull-up resistor while the status indicator is made up of LED with a 100 Ohm resistor. The indicator will stay ON when a connection is active and it will blink at first. The ShiftBrites were fastened using the zip ties.