After a long while of troubleshooting, I’ve finally managed to get the new panels working!
It turned out that one of the panels was working all along, just that I had forgotten to add a small, tiny, silly little jumper!
The other one … well .. that was another story!
The other one I had been in a bit of a hurry when building, and I had no IC socket at home, so I soldered the circuit in place.
Now, I know that the MAX7219 circuit is very sensitive, but I was being careful, but it turned out that after ruling out everything else, I had a burned channel on the chip.
The chip was cut loose, I desoldered the board, which took some effort… bought IC sockets and soldered them in and place the chip back.
What previously wasn’t working as it should was now working! *phew*!
However, the desoldering process had ruptured a little of the via throughputs of the double sided board, so two separate cables in the end was needed to restore everything to where it should be!
Here’s a few pics:
These are still not mounted properly, but I just wanted to give you a quick preview of what it looks like!
Pictures is nice, sure, but what about a video?
Ok.. here goes:
