Hello,

PiXPi is in finals of 2019 Hackaday Prize!

There was so much great projects submitted and I really feel honoured to be among those 20 chosen for final round. 

Also I found it awesome to see my project described in finalists announcement post, thanks Mike for nice words! I really want to appreciate this so I thought the best way to say thanks will be to put as much heart into this project as possible, "heart" in this case, can be translated into "hard work" ;) 

What now:

I just cooled down a bit to be able to think consciously about that what need to be done as there is not much time, so I came to conclusions that I need to prioritise some areas where the biggest improvements can done, so according to this I chosen as main focus :

1. Introduce new feature which is "power driving mode" of modules ports:

I was working on it lately, so stay tuned, it's almost ready and will be soon described in project log.

2. Finish and show effect of usage "motorised/stepper" module: 

Currently I got some base which I show in previous logs, but I was not happy with stepper motor driving electronics and during seeking for better solution I came across project called: "Mechaduino"...  which by the way was 2016 Hackaday prize entry!!: https://hackaday.io/project/11224-mechaduino and I realised that it should be possible to communicate with my controller as Mechaduino is opensource, so possibly it can be quite easy to modify software of Mechaduino to be controlled through PiXPi controller.... Isn't opensource great?! :) 

3. Work hard on new video:

Last, but very important point, as ti's one of requirements of final entry is to create 2-5 minute video which will show project and I got already some initial idea how to do this, but I know it will be quite challenging to do it right. 

Optional point: New hardware design with better ports protections, after experimenting with "power driving mode" I came to conclusions that I will feel safer when power driving transistors gates for each port will be driven through optoisolators, but it's more on good practice rather that new feature introduction as i experimented quite heavily with power driving and I was not able to burn VoCore port with current protections. Possibly I will start to work on it after 1-st of October.

What you think about it?! :) 

It would be really nice to hear some thoughts of community on this project, as this was my main motivation to publish this project here, so don't hesitate to share some I will really appreciate to hear some(Even those critical ones).