Version 5.1

Published on 2018-04-18 in PewPew FeatherWing.

I have been doing some spring cleaning, and found the PCBs I made for the version 5.1 of the PewPew, which I never actually assembled. That version is bigger than my previous attempts, and uses a larger, 3cm matrix. Since I will be soon going to work with that ISSI matrix driver chip again (for the CircuitPython Badge ), I decided to go ahead and assemble this after all. Here’s the result, next to the PewPew Lite for scale (please excuse the flux stains):

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually find the source of those bi-color matrices with square pixels — the ones I have have round pixels, and this one is desoldered from Adafruit’s backpack, because it does look much better. The new board does have sound, but lacks the battery charging circuit — I assumed it will be powered by a non- rechargeablecoin cell battery on the back. Unfortunately, I didn’t test it first, and turns out that the non-rechargeable batteries simply don’t have enough power for this to work.

I don’t currently plan on making any more versions of this, or on manufacturing this version — it’s just something I wanted to finish. I will probably be making more of the PewPew Lite FeatherWings for sale, though, as there seems to be interest in those.