During week four,
the group figured out how to use the Colorduino library to control a single LED
on the matrix. Using this knowledge, the group spent this week coordinating the
joystick's movements with and LED on the matrix.
In order to do this,
the driver had to be plugged into a breadboard and connected to the Arduino
with wires, rather than being plugged into the Arduino directly like usual.
This is because the driver uses all of the pins on the Arduino and therefore
would not allow room for the joystick to be plugged in. Plugging it into a
breadboard allowed the extra pins on the Arduino - that are normally filled by
the driver but do not connect anything - to be used for the joystick.
Eventually, this connection will have to be soldered. Figure 1 below shows
these connections.
Figure 1.
An image showing the matrix driver and joystick module connected to the Arduino with wires.
The program the
group worked on this week started by lighting up the top left corner, or the
light at position (0,0). Then if the joystick is moved left or right, the LED
that is lit will move left or right, staying in the 0th row. This will correspond to the selection process in the game, in which the player moves the joystick left and right to choose a column to place their piece. Figure 2 shows the indexing of the matrix.
Figure 2.
An empty 8x8 matrix with indexes on the side.
Also during week
four, minor adjustments were made to the model created last week. Major
adjustments cannot be done until the components are soldered and the final
measurements can be taken.
