Instructions
Feel free to do this in a different order, or to make changes to best fit the way you work. There is a good deal of soldering, so we recommend having your supplies before starting (a clean tip, a good supply of solder, wire, wire cutters, wire strippers, etc.) …time to roll up your sleeves! See below for some helpful soldering videos suggested by the monome build instructions.
soldering video tutorials!
hardware construction
These instructions will show pictures using the Sparkfun 4×4 buttonpad PCB’s, however, aside from slight differences in the silkscreens, these instructions also apply to the Monome and Bebo button pads (this is of course except for the inter-pcb & ‘break-off’ pcb connections, as the monome and bebo boards come 8×8 with header pins built into the pcb itself).
1. We recommend doing your buttonpads first for sanity reasons. This is where the bulk of the soldering is, and if you get this out of the way first, the rest will seem like the home stretch.
LEDs:
- Solder your LEDs as shown in the picture on the right.
- The LEDs go on the top side of the button pads. You’ll find there is a printed picture detailing where to put the led’s as well as the proper orientation.
- Just in case you are starting out, LEDs (like other diodes) have an anode(+) and a cathode(-), from which current flows in a particular direction. The cathode on an LED is usually marked by a flat side of the ring around the LED as well as a shorter leg/lead.
- More information and pictures can be found on this wikipedia article.
Diodes:
- Flip the boards over and solder in your regular diodes.
- Diodes have a mark on them (a line) signifying their correct orientation (like LEDs, they permit the flow of current in only one direction, while blocking it form flowing the other way).
- Make sure you orient the line properly with the pictures on the circuit board, otherwise your buttons won’t work
Wiring:
- Next comes wiring all four boards together.
- If you haven’t already done so, I would recommend gluing all four boards together.
- Once dried, make the interconnections as shown in the picture and in this diagram.
- I used header pins, but some people found it easier to simply twist the wires together and soldering them directly into the holes.
- The choice is really yours. What’s important here is that LED-GNDx, SWT-GNDx, BLUEx, and SWITCHx all connect to their respective places across all four boards.
2. If you are using the shield designed by Unsped, you have the “break-off” pcb for your ribbon cables. Follow this diagram to ensure proper connections. Look at the diagram closely as this is where we’ve found most issues come from. Wiring this part wrong can seriously yield some funky results! 
- If you are using the Arduinome shield designed by Unsped, this is the easiest part and you are almost there! Everything is clearly labeled. You might want to first solder the sockets for the MAX7219, 74HC164n, and 74HC165n. Next I would do the resistor & resistor network, caps, and header pins for your cables. On the capacitor, make sure you pay attention to polarity which is shown by a stripe on the cap. That should correspond to the “-” on the board.
- Almost done! CAREFULLY bend the legs of the MAX, and 74HC16xn chips and put them in their respective sockets. Attach the shield to the Arduino using the header pins you already soldered. Either directly wiring or by using ribbon cable connectors, go from your break-off pcb to your shield and you are set!
flash arduino serial number
arduinome firmware and upload to arduino
- *** Firmware has been confirmed to flash with Arduino software version 11 and 14+– DO NOT use 12 or 13
- *** When you download/install the Arduino software, there is a folder (at least on mac os) called “Drivers.” MAKE SURE you install these prior to proceeding with compiling and uploading the firmware!
- Make sure you have your arduino selected under the menu, “tools”, “serial port”… should look something similar to /dev/tty.usbserial-a40h-001(or whatever you flashed your serial to)
run arduinomeSerial/serialosc, and you are good to go…
ENJOY!
***If you are having any issues, the first place I would look at:
a) either your routing/connections from the button PCB’s to the break-off PCB
b) if those are 100% right, check your cable orientation from the breakoff pcb to the shield.
***We can’t stress how many times simply turning one cable around fixed problems for myself and others!
