This is the full size image, perfect for getting printed at Inked Gaming : Custom Playmat
(If you just want the image, right click it and save-as for the full size resolution version)
This is the full size image, perfect for getting printed at Inked Gaming : Custom Playmat
(If you just want the image, right click it and save-as for the full size resolution version)
Top left is the 64 RGB LED insert driver
Top right is the master board, 128 switch inputs
Bottom left is the 32x FET driver
Bottom right is the wee raspberry pi comms board
This is a closeup of the master board;
128 direct switch inputs, not charlieplexed/multiplexed. Has an eeprom for game settings, config, audits etc. There is a 2 digit error display, also a 48bit unique serial number on each board (would be good for ID’ing a game over the lan when hooked up to a central server to take in game scores, audits and such!) It has a USB plug that is fused with a 2A auto fuse to provide power to the raspberry pi board. This can be the rs485 master board, run the rules etc.
The FET driver, 32x individual fets. Can be configured to have up to 4 of these boards on the rs485 chain.
The RGB Insert driver, can drive 64 individual RGB LED’s with complex light shows, fades, all running off its own cpu. Can have up to 4 of these boards for 256 RGB LED’s. These are not chained, so if one goes down it does not take down a string of them.
this wee board is the raspberry pi rs485 comms board, it also can be a master.
So I’ve said the word ‘master’ a few times, the original design had the switch board being the master, it ran the rules, read the switches and pumped the switch info out over the bus for all the child boards to snoop on and act opon, as well as sending other messages out over the bus. It would send messages to the RPI for doing audio/video like PLAY_SONG #1, SET_SCORE 123113300, etc.
but the pi comms board was the last board I did and I made it so I could use it outside of this project for other things, so that meant I could make it a master board as well.
with the pi being the master board, all the rules could move to here, off the switch driver board. that would make it more flexible for non C coders (the switch board is PIC32, and you need to write the rules in C), since the PI can run whatever (misson etc if I did the port). the only downside there is the switch board would be trying to ‘control’ the bus more than the master (PI) board would be, and software would need to be written to handle contention of having two boards being able to ‘control’ the bus.
once I’ve soldered them all up and tested them, then I will push it and the base code to my github.
Im probably forgetting things but its late and I’m tired lol
one thing I became aware of later was I’m hooked to the 3v3 pin on the pi, which can only supply 40ma or something, so that board may need a change to swtich 5v down to 3.3v so I dont kill the 3v3 pi pin… and i may just go back to my original design of tethering the pi directly to the switch board with a good old idc cable so the pi is off the rs485 bus..
The next step I might print it out to look over it and that will probably be it for getting rev1 fabbed.
It would be nice if I could tie the rs485 tranceiver to the raspberrypi rx/tx uart pins.
]]>Right now the system runs on a fixed 25 frames per second, giving 40ms to run the loop for all 64 inserts.
Example here is a colour chase, starts by setting the colour to off/black, then in 5 second increments it cross fades from back to blue, blue to aqua, aqua to green, green to yellow, yellow to red and red down to black.
pattern_004: SCOLOUR 0x000000 FTO 0x0000FF, 5000 FTO 0x00FFFF, 5000 FTO 0x00FF00, 5000 FTO 0xFFFF00, 5000 FTO 0xFF0000, 5000 FTO 0x000000, 5000 GOTO pattern_004
The board is connected to an RS485 tranceiver chip that will read instructions. The idea is, feed all the pattern data over from the master control board, then just tell the system, Play pattern #2 on LED #7 (which wold be the flashing keep shooting insert), as in our example is set insert to red, wait for 1/4 a second, set it off, wait 1/4 second, repeat until we send a command to turn it off.
pattern_002: SCOLOUR 0xFF0000 PAUSE 250 SCOLOUR 0x000000 PAUSE 250 GOTO pattern_002
Since rs485 is connected to the control chips UART, we can just open it like a serial device and send simple byte code down the line “P2:7\n” (play pattern 2 on led 7).
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Nasty stuff. Had to break out the sisal wheel on the drill and give all the metal parts a good going over. Its so nice to work with something thats all steel, and no plastic to be seen.
Cleaned up nice, still some work to do on it tho.
Since were going all out, we cant use that nasty old label on the coil anymore either.
On the back it had some crusty nasty old leaf switches. Id rather have microswitches if I can, but the orientation is all wrong. Time to break out the 3d printer and create a shim to replace the leaves.
And there we have it. Bears in Skyrim and shiny polished steel. I do need to get some odd sized screws nobody local carries (#5-40 machine screw) since I broke one prototypeing the shim.
Practice your archery on the target.. or go kill some bears!
This is just a teaser tho;
11x D4
3x D8
7x D6 pips
15x D6 numeric
7x D12
8x D10 10’s
17x D10 1’s
26x D20
2x D20 10’s
in total 96 dice.
My kids will have fun with them, we have a homebrew pokemon game we play with the basic pokemon cards and a couple of dice.
]]>Now that Ive got the solenoid pcb here, I have been working on the Master Control board. Two sections on there need some attention and they are the watchdog circuit and the voltage test circuit.
The watchdog needs to latchup the first time and stay latched on a trigger. Sounds easy, but its proving to be a bit more difficult than expected, as the watchdog resets every 250ms when an error occurs, so it detects an error goes down, then 250ms later pops back up, says all is good and goes on its merry way. Once an error occurs I want it to stay down as at that point I dont want to trust the solenoid mcu (propeller). Latching that signal is proving a bit harder, so I am playing around with a 74HC74 latch.
The second issue is I want to test the voltage (3.3/5v) on startup and only keep going if they are good, so I’m jigging around with that circuit too that sits in front of the PIC32, ideally I want that to latch as well so we dont go into an endless reboot cycle but thats getting complicated now
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