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Toyland, Toyland - challenge for all.


dengel
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OK, I got my Lights Out today, and I have to hand it to Tiger - that's some quality construction The buttons are thick -and yes, very tall as mentioned by Th0mas! They have an excellent feel.

To go more into detail, the PCB that the buttons sit on is a 5x5 matrix similar to that of a PC keyboard. If you need a 5x5 square, congratulations - you're done! Disconnect the key matrix board from the processor "game" board and go to town. The LEDs are all prewired and resistored.

This doesn't hold true if you want to use the boards in other configurations than 5x5. Obviously, when you cut the board, the interconnections that lead to the matrix will be broken, and you'll have to wire the buttons individually. Each individual button is a square ring of contact traces, finger-jointed together with an LED in the center. These rings are all interconnected to each other, so if you are looking to use the original board it looks like there are a few things to do:

1) scrape the traces away that connect the buttons, so each button is like an island unto itself.

2) drill vias to the inside and outside of the rings, like so:

lightsoutbuttons9jt.gif...

3) and solder some leads through the back to create the new button.

4) You'll also need to attach leads to the red LED in the center, and add an inline resistor if you aren't using a DOUT module for lighting control. If you want, you can remove the LED and replace it with your own.

This is of course the poor man's way - if you want, making your own PCBs would be a much better choice. Also, the height of the buttons will require the use of standoffs to push the buttons back from the board, so make sure you plan on that when mounting.

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  • 2 weeks later...

hmm  this now has me thinking about:

Simon Says  -  only 4 color buttons, but there was an advanced version made by someone else that had 8

Touch Screen Sudoku puzzle games - There are some nice blue backlight ones that are full graphic LCD screens with touch grids!

Electronic Chess - would be an interesting visual live system of placing pieces (notes) on the board.. 8 X 8 so two together would be 8 X 16

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yeah.. I was attempting to wrap my head around that..

Sort of a chess battle, but you cant really play by standard rules.

This excedes the capabilities of midibox without some added hardware and software but here was my idea:

1:Each 'player' assigns their special pieces (knight, rook, king, queen, bishop) individual samples.

2:pawns are assigned the basics of the song.. percussion.. and may be changed by software in order to keep the song going. So, software has final say so as to what that piece will represent based on the song.

3:players take turns placing pieces.

Two boards side by side would be 8 patterns by 16 notes right?

The hard part is figuring out how to identify each piece. One  way to pull it off would be to place an led on the bottom of each piece that has a unique frequency pulse. The board gets scanned and determines the piece and location by the pulse train.

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I was thinking more that each square was just a different button that you assigned to a different sample or pattern, and you didn't need to identify peices.

But, if you want to identify peices, any electronic chess game you get is already doing so since well.. that's how it works.  You'd have to reverse engineer how it's doing it but rest assured it's already possible on the board (how is another question)

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Some may have patterns on the bottom that the board somehow recognizes, but for the most part, its done by tracking.

Example:

The machine knows that at the start of the game, that the corners are Rooks. By doing a scan (much like the button scan for MB) It knows that the pieces are there. Now, on your turn, if during a scan it detects that the piece has been picked up (was there, now its gone), It is assuming the piece is still a Rook. So, when you place it down again, it detects so on the following board scan. Again, it assumes that you put down the Rook. You could just as easilly put down a pawn and it would assume that piece is the Rook.

If I remember right, most of those machines place small button magnets in the base of the pieces, and each square has a small coil under it acting as a hall effect sensor, and they are scanned as a matrix. The new ones (pretty plastic/glass) may be using infrared/optical stuff but its all the same.

The REALLY cool ones used an X/Y sled with an electromagnet to move its own pieces around, and drag yours off the board when it takes your pieces. Some even moved your piece back rather than just an anoying buzz when you made an invalid move.

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I was thinking more that each square was just a different button that you assigned to a different sample or pattern, and you didn't need to identify peices.

But, if you want to identify peices, any electronic chess game you get is already doing so since well.. that's how it works.  You'd have to reverse engineer how it's doing it but rest assured it's already possible on the board (how is another question)

That would be a lot easier though wouldn't it? Placing a piece or removing it serves as the mute function or whatever..

Man.. a glass set with multicolor LEDs would just be sweet looking..

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http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/4717118/ctid/17/INstock/Y/D/

has a 1-9 number pad, 4 directional buttons (u,d,l,r) and 6 'mode' buttons.. not to mention the typical sudoku type display. (9x9 squares, in which a number from 0-9 can be written into each square).

http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/2724159/ctid/17/INstock/Y/D/

apparently these have a motion sensor in them..

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