For my first official playtest I set the game up in a hallway at work and invited my students to give it a try. My Goals Learn what’s involved in installing and breaking down the hardware. Use just the basic one and two player rally game to see if people understand it enough to play, […]
Hand Controllers
Two plastic and foam bats with my hand controller hardware strapped on with cable ties. The red button is used to put the controller back in two way communications mode so it can be reset for a different game.
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.
Light Trigger Circuit
The breadboard version of the light trigger worked so I built a more usable version of it for the game prototype. I’ll do a full PCB version next time I do a run. This pass includes a larger potentiometer because the sensitivity will need to be tuned for the lighting at each installation. It worked on […]
Light Trigger Test Circuit
The Hand Controllers will be attached to bats or rackets that the players will swing to hit the “light ball”*. The accelerometer on the Hand Controller will tell me how fast (read: powerful) their swing is, but I still need to know if they timed it right. My original design involved actually hitting something (like […]
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 […]
Cable management – Check.
The modular LED strip holders and a box for them were the results of a couple hours at Techshop this evening. Modular Cable Management Laser cutting the holders took about 27 minutes for the 88+ pieces. Then it took another 8 minutes because my wood was 24″ wide rather than the 26″ that I designed […]
PCB!
My first PCB run was ready this morning from Bay Area Circuits. What a great company – they made two of them in their run and gave me both boards, even though I only ordered one. I’ll be using my Dremel tool with a router attachment to cut out the individual boards. I’m aware of […]
LED strip holders
100 feet of LEDs in a flexible poly casing is not very manageable. The LEDs need to point up (or down if hung from a ceiling) and not get twisted about. They also need a power line running along side them for power boosts every 15 feet or so. And finally, the Ethernet cable that carries the […]