The Configurable Joystick Project

Some time ago Simon and I were wondering if you could make a game based around a configurable joystick. My vision for this would be of you flying your trusty spaceship through, er,space, while evil aliens shot off parts which caused your controls to break.  You would be having to plug and re-plug the control elements while you were flying the ship and decide whether you needed a fire button or a back control on the joystick as you limped home. 

We thought it might be a fun little project and so we made it the basis of our Global Gamejam entry. I was to 3D print the case and build the electronics and Simon and crew would come up with a game based on it. 

This is not quite how it turned out. 

What happened was that number one son was consigned to soldering hell, while I failed to print boxes that were the right size to fit everything in. And then at the end, we found a fundamental flaw in the circuitry that rendered the controller mostly useless.  Although we did win a prize for the "Most Ambitious Failure". 

But I've stuck with it. Above you can see "prototype one". And tonight I got it fully working for the first time. Each control element holds a resistor network that allows the controller to decide which socket it is plugged into. The 8x8 dot matrix screen is to be used for status displays. I've got it talking to the PC rather handily now, next step is to integrate it into the gameplay, 

Great fun. 

The Squarewear Arduino

I'm getting quite keen on the Arduino devices. While they are nowhere near as powerful or easy to program as my beloved .NET Microframework platform  they do come in a huge range of prices and configurations. 

The Squareware 2.0 device you can see here is no exception. It is really designed for use as a wearable device. It has nice big holes that can be soldered into press-studs or connected to conductive cloth. It also has an on-board rechargable battery and recharging circuitry for an off-board one too. There are temperature and light sensors along with a buzzer and I reckon it is a pretty complete package.   It also has a pair of quite beefy drivers so it can switch more current into devices like larger lights or motors. 

You can pick it up from Tindie for 23 dollars, which I think is a reasonable price. Postage is reasonable too, and mine got here in only a week or so from the 'states. 

I've not done anything with mine yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something...

Hardware Group at C4DI

Tonight we had our first meeting of the new C4DI hardware group. There seem to be lots of peple who are keen on getting to grips with hardware and embedded systems, with interest in Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Gadgeteer to name a few. I took along some toys, as had other folks. Above you can see the insides of my Tagomatic device, along with some pinball machine related shenanigans which includes using an Arduino to capture messages inside the pinball table circuitry and some coils of electro-luminescent wire. That lights up and looks really cool. 

Stay tuned for details of future events, this looks like it is going to be great fun, and it's not too late to sign up over at the meetup page for C4DI.