Creating an Arduino Tic Tac Toe game

Question

I'm trying to create a Tic Tac Toe game using the Arduino Uno. Since the Uno has a limited amount of pins to use, I am trying to see if there is a configuration that would make the project possible.

For the button detection circuit I am using a simple voltage divider and an analog pin. I made the following in a circuit simulator:

Now for the LEDs, since the Uno only hosts 9 pins, and we need 18, we need some sort of wizardry to get something working. I came up with the following design using the circuit simulator:

I would use 9 of these, one connected per Arduino pin. Since only one of the LEDs in each of the 9 sets should be on, this type of circuit should allow the Arduino to control all of the 18 LEDs. In the simulation I get about 5mA draw from each side (with 5v and GND).

However my problem is that the LED setup doesn't work. The lights are extremely dim. At first I simply thought that 5mA was not enough for the LED. I decided to measure the current going through the LED and found that it was about 0.8mA. What happened to my 5mA calculation? After all, isn't Arduino pin able to handle about 40mA? Am I asking for too much current?

Where have I gone wrong with this? Thanks in advance for any help.

tommis15

Answer 1

I was working with it more and I found that my mistake was that I was using pin 0 and 1 to test (serial) and switching to pin 2 and above works.

Answer 2

You should really provide more info: - your program - what exactly you are trying to achieve (you seem to be driving two leds per 'board position'. What do they represent?) and schematics.

It would also help if you measured the voltage level at the pin in both the ON and OFF state and mentioned it here.

However, one thing that should be noted (hopefully before it is too late) is that your 40mA/pin assumption is wrong. First of all, 40mA is the absolute maximum rating for one pin (i.e. the value you should stay clear of). Secondly, although one isolated pin can source or sink close to 40mA, the total of all GPIO pins should stay below 200 mA. See also http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/ArduinoPinCurrentLimitations .