Logic Gate BG: Ideas List

makerkaren — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 20:27:49 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by makerkaren on 4/19/2017 8:27:49 PM

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Logic Gate Game Build

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I want to gather all the ideas you all post for the build. If I missed something, let me know in the comments.

You guys are great. Keep the ideas coming!

Overall Design restrictions:

Parts Needed: (so far)

Connectors - wires with a solid connector on each end, connectors on the board that the wires easily attach to that can be easily interfaced with a circuitboard (preferably with little to no hand soldering required)
Display - Need a way to indicate difficulty level, cycle (3-4 total per puzzle), score, and possibly the gate puzzles themselves.
Indicators - LEDs or something else to show given signal, user generated signal, and desired result.

Other Design Factors

Target audience: Age 7+. Need to factor in the dexterity and strength of children.
COST: We are aiming for the sale cost of the game to be $100-150. This means that all parts should come to a cost of under about $30.
Overall size - Ben wants it to be portable. All components have to fit in a small encasement that can easily be held in the hand while playing.
This is going to be a manufactured product, so all components need to be easily sourced, not scrapped from old products.
Needs to have a physical interface, because otherwise it's just a video game/app.

CONNECTORS

Design restrictions:

Inexpensive, $0.05 or less each.

Not labor intensive to assemble or no assembly required.

Ideal price: <$0.10 each

Ideas

Magnetic purse clasps
Stackable
Revisit using banana plugs
Have them gendered to designate inputs vs outputs (gordiegii)
Fiber optics w/ RGB LEDs & photodiodes.
Y cables in place of bus bars

DISPLAY

Design restrictions:

We'd like to drive it with a PIC32 using LCC (Low Cost Controllerless) method.

Use DMA to send data to PMP and drive the clocks with interrupts. (Other suggestions welcome.)

Approximate resolution: 480x272

Larger than 4", preferably 6".

Does NOT need to be touchscreen - PROBABLY GOING TO USE TOUCH means we need fewer real buttons

Does NOT need to be color.

Ideal price: ~$10>

Optional: Versatility. Using a screen rather than a static graphic to represent the logic gates allows for more options and possibly requires fewer connections on the game surface.

Progress:

Using a PIC32MZ Starter Kit Dev board, interface adapter, ancient Microchip breakout board, and a PICTail board with a LCD soldered to it.
MPLAB X v3.55 using Harmony 2.02 development platform.
Harmony will pre-configure code for you, including graphical systems. But the documentation is fragmented and dense, so getting it up and going takes awhile.
We've found a very common 480x272 LCD that has a touchscreen variant. The PIC32MZ2048EFM has enough RAM to display 16 bit color images on it. If possible, I'd like to use 8 bit colors and use the extra space as a double buffer (so you don't see things as they're being drawn)
Had to tweak the code, but got it working with our custom rig.
Raspberry PI with a touch DSI screen (jim_teasdale)

LCD To-Do:

I want to have the display sideways, portrait mode.
Harmony seems to have configurations for this but they don't work. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
Aria graphics library has a lot of functions but is probably overkill. Maybe we can abstract down a layer...
JPG works but looks bad / is slow loading. Would prefer to use PNG but haven't gotten them to work.
Images can be stored in Flash and there's probably enough to store whatever icons we need.

INTERFACE - CURRENT PROGRESS

Design restrictions:

Used by children with limited dexterity and finger strength.

Will need many wires and game board connectors.

Ideas

Have a breadboard-like interface with logic gate "pieces" that can be placed to solve a puzzle.

Other Design Considerations/Suggestions

Connectors with electrical current flowing them being a safety hazard (tm14)
- Give Felix speech bubbles.
Voice/sound not required to play ( fisher0251)

Tags: connectors, design considerations, the heck with karen, portability, theheckwithkaren, Design, display interface, leds, logic gate board game, theheckwithkaren logic gate bg, display, theheckwithkaren_logic_gate_bg, logic gate