Ping-Pong Blinky

Ok, I bought the TI MSP-EXP430G2 Dev board a while ago, and it was about time I tried it out, as always, with LEDs and Ping-Pong Balls.

It fades between the colours.

You will need:
A 2xAA batery holder, with 2 AA batteries
A 9v battery clip
A small piece of copper stripboard, just large enough to cover the back of your battery holder, but not go over it
a TI MSP430 launchpad (really cheap, get it from proto-pic in the UK,, about $4.50 straight from TI, pluss shipping)
A Ping Pong Ball
A diffused Common Cathode RGB LED
3 pin headers
a jumper
a 14 pin DIP socket
a 10K resistor
Wire

Solder
Hot GLue Sticks

Hot Glue gun
Drill with 5mm bit
Soldering Iron

If you have never used this development board before, you will not have a development enviroment.

The code was written for MSPGCC, and uploaded with MSPDebug - this is cross platform, a quick google will land you with the downloads

The code can be easily ported to CCS or IAR, which come free from TI

You can download the source code from my GitHub repo

Just compile it (or use the .elf provided) and use mspdebug rf2500 to program the chip (not applicable for CCS or IAR)



If this is your first upload, then congratulations, you have programmed your first chip :-D

Make sure you are good to go, just a pic to check your stuff against. 

Hold it steady against the desk (I haven in the pic, as one hand held the camera, but I did do it, honest ), and drill a 5mm hole for the LED

It should just fit in, with little room to move, the lip should stop it falling in

Turn on your hot glue gun, and wait for it to heat up, then cover the LED in glue (leave the pins though)  This will make it permanent.

First we need to add the DIP socket, as seen in the picture

We need to mark out where to drill it to break the trace. Otherwise the pins will short.

I deliberately did some too big so that you can compare, later on you will see why they are too big. Use the smaller ones as a guide.

Solder the joints. You can see why the holes are too big, there is not enough room for soldering, and the joints near them are messy, going round the holes, and spreading out.

Add these components and wires. The 10K resistor keeps the chip from resetting, and the jumper acts as a power switch,

Now we just place and solder the LED, making sure we get the wires the correct way round. The longest pin should be on the broken trace with the wre on it, the other three should be on traces going to the DIP socket.

Cover the back of the battery holder with glue, and place on the stripboard. Solder the 9v clip to the wires protruding from the circuit, and clip it onto the battery holder.

Take the MCU from the dev board and place it in the DIP socket (make sure it is the right way round, line up the notch on one of the shorter sides with that on the socket) Turn it on with a jumper, and watch it glow and change colour.