Another Major Milestone

G

gmbartlett

New member
Today I finished assembling my Renard 8SS. I built a custom jumper cable so the pin out of the Helix would match the pin out of the Renard. I fired everything up and it worked. The Helix can now control the Renard series of boards. Since I only have one Ren8SS it was a very limited test but I'm confident that it will work with up to the maximum 286 channels at 50ms event period. The hardest part is getting the data off of the microSD card and since I've already tested 512 channels of DMX there won't be any problems pulling 286 bytes off.

This is the last major milestone I wanted to accomplish for this first spiral of development for the new Helix V2. I still need to clean up the code and finish the assembly manuals. If anyone is still interested in the Helix, my goal is to have it available by early July 2010. I will post the prices and process at that time.

Thank you for your patience. I hope you won't be disappointed with this new and improved controller.
 
Very, very cool, Greg! Congratulations on a successful test but more especially, on providing some really creative capability to the DIY controller line.

Awesome!
 
Simply amazing Greg...Thank-you for working so hard on this project...You have made all kinds of major milestones with this and I can't wait to get ahold of 1 or 2 and get em going..
 
Looking forward to getting my hands on a few boards. It will be nice not to have to occupy my computer with Christmas Light Stuff especially when the kids want to get on it!
 
So when are these bad boys gonna be ready for coop order status ??? Also what are these going to cost us to get as well as build ???
 
Warlock said:
So when are these bad boys gonna be ready for coop order status ??? Also what are these going to cost us to get as well as build ???
Click to expand...

I plan to have the boards available early July 2010. I'm still working on the assembly manual for the Main board. I haven't started on the assembly manual for the new SSR Daughter board; but, it isn't nearly as complex as the Main board manual. The assembly manual for the standard Daughter board hasn't changed since last year.

I will not be providing any parts, other than the EEPROM and microSD card socket. 51fordf2 had mentioned he would be interested in running a parts co-op. If he gets enough participants then you should be able to save a reasonable amount of money.

I will be providing the boards for a fixed cost that will include the shipping and PayPal fees. It looks like the prices for North America will be:

Main Board (including pre-soldered microSD card and preprogrammed EEPROM): $20.00
Daughter Board: $6.00
SSR Daughter Board: $20.00

Estimated total assembly cost (PCB and parts), assuming no parts co-op:

Main Board configured as the Network Controller: $140
Main Board configured as a Network Node: $110
Daughter Board: $21.00
SSR Daughter Board: $105.00

These prices don't include the cost of an enclosure.

If you have never used the Helix before then you will need another XBee radio and XBee carrier board for the PC side (the Helix Network Supervisor). This will cost approximately $61.00.

When I'm ready to release the PCBs I will create a new thread here and in the Group Buy forum.

I'm out of town at this time and I have sporadic access to the internet. If there are any questions I may be a little slow getting to them.
 
As Greg mentioned, I will probably be running a coop for parts, when the time comes. I've been overly busy the last few weeks, but I'm looking over the manuals for Greg, and hope to have that done in the next week. The whole Helix is looking really good, THANKS, GREG!! I know you mentioned once, it's therapeutic, but we surely appreciate it! You've really made it a "one for all" project...

Maybe someday, the LedTricks? I know you've mentioned that in the past.

R
 
I have not seen nor heard anything since my last post on this project...What is an update on this and when can we expect these to be available ??
Thanks again Greg.
Joe..
 
I'm sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been crazy around my house for the last month and a half. I've also been fighting with a couple of qwerks in Windows. I'm not a professional programmer and my last formal programming course was well over 20 years ago. Windows is a different beast than anything I learned in college. KC helped me some but I've been muddling through some issues with the Helix Network Supervisor app. I think it is finally stable.

I believe the Helix Network Controller is stable and the Helix Network Supervisor application is fairly stable. I'm not as confident with the Helix Network Nodes. I ran into a new problem with the XBee radios. This only showed up when I started doing detailed documentation of the testing procedures. I've been working on this for the last couple of days. Late last night I believe I found a workaround. I need to do some additional testing of the networking functions before I'm confident everything is stable. If the testing goes well then I will need to update the assembly manual to document this workaround.

To answer your question I have the boards ready to send out as soon as I’m confident that everything is stable and I’ve finished the documentation. I haven’t seen anything that gives me too much concern but it just takes time to work out. One of the things I’ve done this year is to make getting updates to the Helix firmware and Helix Network Supervisor app very easy. So, if anyone would like to get a board now I would be willing to make them available and any future updates will be easily downloaded.

This isn’t the formal announcement but if anyone is interested please send an email to orders@helixlightcontroller.com and specify the type (main board, daughter board, SSR daughter board) and quantity that they would like and I will send a PayPal invoice and get the boards to you.

Thank you everyone for your patience,
 
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