NerfStatTrak/guide/notes.txt

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00 - Planning and getting parts
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Since most tutorials favored a 9V battery as a power source I opted for this route.
Later I discovered it's about the worst thing you can get and will only power the
Arduino for a day while wasting half the battery's potential. Oh well. For now it'll
do. I decided to get some cheap power switches instead so I can turn it off manually.
This means we definitely need to store the values in EEPROM, neat!
01 - Basic multiplexing test
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Since the 5V regulator, shift registers and DIP transistors weren't in yet I started
off using the regular NPN transistors, powering the Arduino from the USB connection
and the display using two AA batteries. Using 4 transistors will allow switching between
two digits and two segments, to get a feel for how it'll work in the end.
I didn't want to solder the Arduino just yet but the pins were making aweful connections,
so I lifted it up and stretched the connectors to reach the next row. Similarly, the
batteries are simply stuck together using electrical tape. This whole thing's a bodge at
the moment, but it works!