Time to upgrade the control box before Playtest #3. The current box is just a floor and face for the controls. The guts hang out – it’s ugly and probably dangerous. I designed a new box to hold the Arduino Mega, it’s power supply, the control knobs and displays, and jacks for everything external to […]
main system
First Working Demos
After a long weekend of debugging I got the whole system to work reliably with one controller. To commemorate that I shot a couple of demo videos. First Game Demo Showing a simple single-player rally game on 30 meters of LED strips (900 LEDs). Hardware Tour Quick overview of all the individual elements involved.
Connector Cable Assembly and First Test
I thought it would take an hour to make all the custom cables I need to connect the shield to the front panel, RJ45 jack, etc. Luckily I started with the RJ45 jack cable so I could test the boards. I needed to crimp a connector onto each wire and slide them into the female […]
PCB Assembly
Over the course of a couple nights I got the PCBs cut up and mostly assembled. I used a Dremel router table with a 3/32″ router bit to cut the PCB down to its individual elements. It worked okay, but I wouldn’t want to do too many this way. The small boards tended to shutter […]
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 […]
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 […]