Nathan Fisk's dashboard

I think I figured it out... I didn't have the MaxM wired as your photo showed for the external setup. Specifically, I didn't have the ground wired to the Gnd pin on the arduino. Things appear to be working perfectly now. Thanks anyway!

(If I am far past the limits of technical support, just let me know...)

Sure - here's a few...

http://picasaweb.google.com/nwfisk/Ar...

I know it's something of a mess, but...

I've got a keypad and the MaxM hooked up to the Arduino. I'm using the keypad to control the MaxM, with some serial feedback from the Arduino.

In the first shots, I have the blaster board connected, powered by a 5v external supply. In this setup everything works fine, no problems at all. I can manually set the color, I can shuffle through the pre-set scripts, and it will run for hours and hours without incident.

In the last 3, I have the master board connected to one of the RGB light strips from DealExtreme. In the first, the MaxM is driving the strip without instruction from the Arduino, running through the startup script. In the second, the Arduino is running, and the MaxM has become unresponsive. In this case, I got past initializing the MaxM, but upon attempting to run one of the startup scripts, the MaxM froze. Other times the Arduino has become unresponsive, rather than the MaxM. I realize the exposed alligator clips may look somewhat suspicious, but I guarantee there's no shorting going on there...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!