Hi Mike, Mike here...Originally Posted by Mike, K8LH
I agree with you 100%. However, I think *part* of the appeal of this approach is it's "brute-force". I'm in fact a big fan of the "smart drivers" from TI (and others, see my previous post) and have designed systems much as you've described for commercial use. However, I think that users, beginners in particular, are more comfortable with an "all-in-one" board like this.
It does have it's shortcomings but that's not really the point. When you look "under-the-hood" there are a lot of basic lessons (no pun intended). This board grows (by an additional 143 leds) on the beginning "blink an led" ideas. Other than generating sound (not so easy) flashing leds is probably up there with the first things that people want to do when starting out with microcontrollers (other than those that have never touched a soldering iron, never done any programming of any kind, buy a "system" and then want to "design" a USB based robot control system with 100 servo's, motion feedback, PID, voice control and image recognition. With one PIC. In Basic. Canned routines. Yes, that is a dig and you know who you are).
I volunteered to layout this PCB not because I am a nice guy (I am actually, just ask my dog), but because contrary to what some people think I do believe in helping out people that genuinely want to learn and see this is as a platform that would (hopefully) make them pull out a soldering iron, buy some parts and go through the process and learn something. My previous post about "not doing rip-up" is out the window awhile ago...
Mike Tripoli
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