Square One?

Feels a bit like I'm back to square one doing these kind of things again... ;)
Only this time I actually know what I'm doing. Which sure is a plus!

I'm especially proud over the new code and setup.
The lights update at a very high refresh rate and gives a solid 3.01V when fed with 5V (duty cycled 1:8) and 5.04 at 9V. Presumably I'll get roughly steady 6V out of 12V too, which is perfect. Light rows and columns are all part of the same PIC32 port, thus the cost of updating all lights is the same as updating a single pin.

1) I/O expander MCP23S17 and micro SD in action. Super awesome toggle switch as input. 

2) Darlington transistor array ULN2308a driving TIP107 along with TIP102's.
Very nice combo, although not entirely logic level they are bipolar transistors
and react similarly to input. No "ramping up" here - and - no flickering at all! :)

I've also decided to give GI and flashers their own dedicated lines controlled by TIP102's and a MCP23S17. Flashers due to the voltage requirement to duty cycle them and GI for - worst comes to worst, a little flicker on a blinking light is no biggie, but flickering lights that shouldn't be, is.

I thought my old code was pretty optimized but take the old render routine, for instance. It performed a single row update in 100uS, and now I'm down to 50uS including updating all lights, all switches, all cabinet inputs and solenoids.... AND twice the amount of colors.
Overall, everything is high frequency SPI, direct port writes, updating other parts while one part is busy and maximizing use of hardware features and interrupts.

*pats himself on the back*