Continuing work on the Arduino powered Front Logic Display

Tonight I settled in to get one of the Front Logic Displays (FLD) pieced together.  I brought my laptop and plugged in a second monitor, fired up a Star Wars movie and stayed in touch with the world on Facebook...

One suggestion another builder made was to snip the LED prongs with a nail clipper instead of the ...ahem...Radio Shack clipper made for the role.  The nail clipper makes a very clean cut while the other one does not, making it difficult to get the prongs to fit into the PCB board.

I found cutting them at an angle, right where the tab is, works best.  It sure is a lot easier to get them to fit in the PCB with a pointed tip.  I got more done in 45 minutes than last time, that was for sure.

Notice the LEDs all look a bit, well, unorganized.  I'll work on making them more orderly when it is time to line them up with the bezel piece.  For now, they are all in and ready for testing.

Next up was to get the Arduino UNO ready to go.  With the Arduino software for Windows downloaded and installed, I just had to get the LED Library.  All of these steps are detailed on this link 

Following the instructions, I had power wires going from the FLD to the Arduino.  If you have jumper leads, this is a lot easier!  Servo wire is extremely thin and hard to keep secured into the power connector on the FLD.

With everything done, we had blinking lights!

So far so good....on to the next one!