Dominion-Network Work Log

Back, but busy

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:44:43 +0100

I’m back but as the title suggests, I’m still rather busy, real life stuff but I will be back soon I promise! I’ve recently turned 28 and for my birthday I got a BigTrak Jr from my wife! So I’ll be finishing the dance mat soon then I’ll be turning my attention to the BigTrak Jr with an Arduino ^_^

A break from the dance mat

Sat, 05 May 2012 12:21:54 +0100

I’m going to take a break in the Dance Mat hack just to suggest a couple of idea’s on how to expand, and where to watch out for possible problems.

Suggestions & Ideas…

You could make the entire thing wireless by getting a wireless keyboard, the rest of the hack is pretty straight forward, there is enough room in this enclosure to run the signal wire around the enclosure at least once, maybe one and a half times.

You won’t need to hack the receiver unit and the rest of the hack is straight forward.

Another suggestion (and I learned this the hard way) is solder your wires to the keyboard circuit then don’t touch it with your soldering iron again, instead get some terminal blocks like in the image below

Then once you’ve wired up the mat, you just screw them into those connectors, and it’ll leave it open for upgrades, or if you want to use the mat for a different game? Maybe a MAME cabinet, or a game Emulator (Super Mario Brothers would be funny on this)

If I make another one (which to be honest, I wouldn’t mind) I’ll be following these suggestions for certain.

Now possible area’s you could run into snags.

Wiring… you’ll need to make sure you label each pad, I had post-it notes on the actual pads I was working on just so I didn’t get confused.

Also make sure you have ‘too much’ wiring coming off the pads, don’t run into the same mistake as I have by thinking you have enough then finding out you’ve cut them WAY to short, I’ve got to cut / strip / tin / resolder / isolate some extensions on mine because I didn’t follow the old saying “Measure Twice, Cut Once”

Make sure you’re careful when handling the mat, my mat actually surprised me by staying attached to the circuit board, if it does come apart, you should be able to put it back together fairly simply, by aligning the connectors up and using some duct tape.

Also don’t solder on / over the actual mat, I did this once and a bit of solder dropped off and melted a spot on the plastic mat and the bottom protective layer.

Another suggestion and possible problem area, key/pin mapping I’ve got a couple sheets of paper laying around my office with pin diagrams that I drew by hand to map out the pins to what key presses are required, ALWAYS consult them you don’t want to fuck up and having to de-solder any wires (if you don’t do the screw terminal suggestion) as you could burn an important trace right off the board (I’ve almost done this but I managed to secure it with some hot glue) rendering the board useless.

If you do re-create, or create this hack in your own vision I hope you’ll walk away after reading this article with a better understanding and some idea’s on how to make your hack amazing.

Thank you for reading.

Removed some of the support pegs to make room for the keyboard...

Sat, 05 May 2012 11:38:33 +0100

Removed some of the support pegs to make room for the keyboard circuit

Board completely unpopulated, ready for cutting

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:49:44 +0100

Board completely unpopulated, ready for cutting

Fuck

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:48:47 +0100

I screwed up on the hack, the wires are a bit short and if I touch the keyboard control board with my iron again a trace will burn off rendering it useless, so going to snip the wires and extend them so I can get the board into the enclosure until I can get a replacement keyboard. Hopefully today I get the thing working.

Need to solder a couple of wires together for the controls

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:45:08 +0100

Need to solder a couple of wires together for the controls

Wires duct taped to the mat, connections are good

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:44:16 +0100

Wires duct taped to the mat, connections are good

Making good tinned contacts

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:43:25 +0100

Making good tinned contacts

Isolating the ground pads

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:58:11 +0100

Isolating the ground pads

Board marked off, ready for cutting

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:14:45 +0100

Board marked off, ready for cutting

The ground layer

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:16:11 +0100

The ground layer

The button layer

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:15:15 +0100

The button layer

My hacked microphone and camera boom

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:00:40 +0100

My hacked microphone and camera boom

Found a couple of bargins in a charity shop gonna grow me some...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:33:44 +0100

Found a couple of bargins in a charity shop gonna grow me some diamonds!

Got a Dreamcast and a Nintendo NES me thinks some hacking and...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:20:11 +0100

Got a Dreamcast and a Nintendo NES me thinks some hacking and steampunking is in my future

A quick demo video of my little ardtrax platform I need some...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:59:00 +0100

A quick demo video of my little ardtrax platform I need some 2.5k resistors to center the hacked servos (thats the buzzing you hear)

Hooking up my bluetooth to the arduino

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:12:00 +0100

Hooking up my bluetooth to the arduino

My bluetooth module arrived today, gonna have fun with it later

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:50:49 +0100

My bluetooth module arrived today, gonna have fun with it later

A nice little meccano frame for some modded servos to act as a...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:55:00 +0100

A nice little meccano frame for some modded servos to act as a base for a small rover robot

The backend of the diy motor driver board for the ardtrax...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:52:35 +0100

The backend of the diy motor driver board for the ardtrax project