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Logic Gate Board Game 01: Project Planning -- Episode 282

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element14's The Ben Heck Show

Join the Ben Heck team every week for amazing hacks! Watch them build and mod community-inspired projects using electronics!

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Logic Gate Board Game
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The Ben Heck Team begin mapping out the Logic Gate Game by considering its purpose, areas for improvement, reducing costs to build to scale, and materials to be used.  Ben uses a PIC microcontroller with plenty of I/O, wires up a breadboard, and uses ChipKit to quickly roll out code.  The team needs your help deciding on an LCD screen and a microcontroller with enough IO to connect with all the plugs!

 

Ben and Karen begin by mapping out a plan for their prototype using a diagram from a previous build.  They get rid of FLIP-FLOP, COUNTER, NAND, and NOR and keep AND, OR, XOR, and NOT. They can make NAND and NOR using the NOT gates. Each game set will come with 10-20 jumper wires to keep costs reasonable.  Ben and Karen offer different perspectives on how best to set up a learning game and who their target audience will be.

Next, it’s time to Ben and Felix to make a test circuit. Ben takes out a PIC32 starter kit with plenty of IO on it.  You program these with Microchip’s MPLB X IDE which can be found online. If they’re able to find a microcontroller with enough I/O they could conceivably simulate all the logic gates.  The other option would be to use an external I/O expander.  The idea is to use a line of female headers and another line of male headers to crudely simulate their logic gate connections and then trying to do a state machine loop MPlab to get it to simulate what they want.

Before going for it with MPlab, Ben first uses the Arduino ChipKit IDE to make things easier so he can roll out a quick example.  The ChipKit uses a PIC32MX795F512L which has plenty of I/O to test.  Ben wires up the breadboard and writes some code.  They’re writing the logic gates in code instead of using IC’s.

Parents

  • Back in 1971 I learned digital logic at Infants school (6-7 years old) using nothing more than;

         A pair of Scissors,

         some cards,

         and Knitting needles.

     

    And Set theory using;

         a few cane hoops

         and wooden blocks.

     

    And still carry this knowledge to this day. The beauty about these solutions is that you can easily replace any lost or damaged parts.

     

    But for the 21st century an all singing all dancing (and inexpensive) electronic version could be made using a PSoC 4 (or PSoC 5LP for the deluxe version) with some of it not requiring any coding whatsoever.  Doing this also gives you the option of using switchable logic templates for different difficulty levels and being able to wirelessly network them together for competitions.

     

    Just a thought.

  • in reply to COMPACT

    If space is not a constraint then you could use premade modular connectors as used for Ethernet and phone wiring.

    It's a great upcycle/reuse idea.

     

    Also Springs as connectors also spring to mind. image

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