While I’ve been waiting for the PCB to be made I’ve been working on designing the software. I’ve been using LucidChart to design flowcharts of the main systems. Hand Controller The Hand Controller sends a stream of data from the accelerometer and light trigger. It has a few different modes depending on whether the game […]
Display Panel Working Prototype
Tonight I cut the display from 1/4″ poplar on a laser cutter and installed the switches, pots and displays. (The single 7 segment display on the left still needs to be mounted.) I struggled with how to easily mount the other two displays – a short (<1/4″) very thin wood screw was needed… then hot glue […]
Display panel prototyping
With the electronics taken care of, it’s time to turn attention to the display panel. This was paper prototyping at its essence: I moved displays, knobs and a switch around until the flow made sense. I have another set of displays, but while the extra numbers looked cool, it made the whole thing very confusing. […]
First PCB Fab Run!
All the PCBs are designed and ready to print. I was able to combine them onto one panel for a single run. High confidence in the Hand Controller board and most of the Mega Shield, but only the communications portion of the shield has been tested. The other parts are primarily plugs, so easily fixable […]
Connectors
Deciding on connectors between the PCBs and off-board components was more difficult than I expected. There are dozens of systems for connections and I wasn’t familiar with most of them. I ended up buying a grab bag of connectors (for only $7.95) at Jameco – the process of digging through and sorting 200 random pieces […]
Next steps
Prior to pcb fab run verify: PoE at 12v over full 100 ft run. Communications work both ways. Photo transistor works over 10 ft run. All the above work together Changes: Shrink RJ45 pcb to same width as controller board Silkscreen full pcb layer to include mounting holes for alignment Rework to fit 4 RJ45 […]
Hand Controller v3.1
Swapped out R3 for a potentiometer and made VBAT and GND traces wider on the PCB.
PCB plan
Bay Area Circuits will built a 2 sided board for $30 (educational discount) up to 50 sq. in. I’m planning to do a single board with all my PCBs on it: 2 Hand Contollers (1.25″ x 4.75″) 2 Sensor Boxes (1″ x 2″) 1 Mega shield (2″ x 4″) 1 RJ-45 dual jack (main box […]
Display Panel v1
This is a rough idea of what the main display panel will look like. The green button starts a game. The light can pulse when waiting to start and glow when in play. The knob below it selects the game with the game number displayed above it. When you select a new game it resets […]
Sensor Box v1
There will be a box at each player’s station. One RJ-45 connects to the Mega with power and TX/RX. The other RJ-45 connects to the hand controller with the same power and TX/RX. It also uses the other data pair to connect a photo transistor that will have a beam from a laser pointer for the […]