It comes with firmware which allows it to be used as a smart display peripheral with a host system. There is a bar-graph mode. There are two dot-matrix character sets – 5×7 for one character, or 3×5 to display two characters side-side. There is also a raw mode where each individual led can be accessed.

Nova SMT Blinky uses an Microchip ATtiny 85 Processor. It can operate from 3 1.5V batteries or a 5 volt supply. It can be driven with either 5V or 3.3V systems.

Demo Mode

When supplied just power, Nova SMT Blinky will come up in ‘demo’ mode, showing off its various capabilities and special effects.

Driver Library

An Arduino-compatible library is available which can be used drive Nova SMT Blinky as a display peripheral

Source Code & Schematics

For people who would like to program Nova SMT Blinky directly, source code is available on github, which can be loaded into the Arduino IDE along with 3rd party support for AtTiny. New firmware can be flashed using a Tiny AVR Programmer available from SparkFun. Schematics and Eagle CAD files are also on github

Watch the Video Demo (Turn on Closed Captioning)

This is a video of the built-in demo mode which shows off all the features which can be easily commanded from an external system using the Driver Library on github