Build Your Own Airfield?

[George Mann]

Hi folks,

With Airfield long since out of production, there is still some general interest from people in creating their own. Let’s start documenting what we know here, shall we?

A couple of people in particular seem motivated to do some 3rd party parts suppliers and figure out how to make it all work. I hope to connect people with each other here, and post some additional details about how to make your very own Airfield.

George

[George Mann]

OK for starters, here’s the link to the source code for Airfield: https://github.com/r3cgm/airfield

[Jeremy Williams]

Excellent. The most expensive part of the hardware production was the handmade light cables. We used RJ11 (telephone) cables with the connector at one end and the 4 conductors split at the other soldered to two LEDs. We used 32 RJ11 jacks on the PCB for a total of 64 control LEDs, in addition to 4 jacks for 8 “General Illumination” lights.

Does anyone know of a replacement for these cables? They don’t necessarily have to be RJ11 or even in pairs. If we can source LEDs on cables with some kind of modular connector on the end, we could base the revised design around it.

[Jeremy Williams]

FWIW I wrote a vendor on eBay and asked if they can make 100cm versions of these cables. Will follow up if they respond.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/373061500550

5mm, Warm White, 75 QTY.

[George Mann]

Here are a few more possibly useful details…

The BOM is apparently missing references to the specific chips we used for the ATMEGA328P and MAX7219CNG, but reportedly these parts will work:

https://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/microchip-technology/ATMEGA328P-PU/ATMEGA328P-PU-ND/1914589

https://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/maxim-integrated/MAX7219CNG/MAX7219CNG-ND/948191

Another comment we received was that the RJ11 parts are nearly impossible to obtain without buying hundreds, so a possible workaround was to solder directly to the pads and connect up the LEDs and a current limiting resistor.

We’ll continue to post more details as they come in!

[Jeremy Williams]

You won’t need a current limiting resistor. The MAX7219 uses one resistor for all LEDs based on the forward voltage of the LEDs used.

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