Dart Board Hack (Help with wiring)

[Fusion Disaster]

Moderations: While this should be in "Arcade Misc", I feel it will get more attention/help here and is essentially an arcade hardware hack. Feel free to move it if you believe it should be.

First an Overview before I get to my question:
I'm taking my cheap electronics dart board and hacking it to integrate with an old PC. This way I can transform it into something more like a bar dart machine. I plan to write custom software that will run the games, scoring, animations, sounds, etc. I think it'll really be a fun addition to my game room then.

Now onto the Question:
1. I pulled the board apart and found that it works almost identically to a standard keyboard. There are 3 sheets of plastic behind the main board, with metal contacts wire through them. The middle sheet is blank and serves simply as a spacer between the 1st & 3rd sheets. Each scoring section on the board has contact behind it that work just like a key stroke. This eventually splices down to two 10-contact threads. So I'm assuming I have a 10x10 matrix to map out correctly. I figure I can reference the keyboard hacks on the main page for info on how to map out the matrix, but I have a question. With a keyboard hack you plug it into the PC, open notepad, and then contact the wires in order to see which key presses show up. However with the dart board it doesn't have any power, so how would I figure out which two wires equal which scoring section on the dart board?

2. What do you think the best way to wire the dartboard into the PC would be? I'll need at least 82 contacts (ie. 4 sections per score (2xsingle 20, 1xdouble 20, 1xtriple 20) plus single & double bull). And a few more contacts for 1-4 player, quarters, and navigation buttons. Most of the interface boards only have around 56 contacts. So should I utilize a hacked keyboard, as they have around 104 contacts. Other ideas?

[The Man]

You only need 62 contacts for the board.  Each number has 4 scoring sections but only three are unique.  A keyboard would be good for the number of keys, but I'm not sure you could get passed the ghosting problem.  Not sure how you could this either, unless you pulled each dart after you throw it.

It will be interesting to hear what others come up with.

Good luck!
TM

[Shape D.]

dont forget the contact for outside the board. when you miss.

[Fusion Disaster]

The Man:
62!? Duh! I just need to wire the single score pads together. Man it's been a long week. So guess I could just use 2 KeyWiz Eco 2's, if that's possible? Maybe if I used a PS2 line splitter?

I won't need to pull each dart as the board sits virtical and the weight of the dart pulls the plastic button back off the contact after initial hit. That's the way it works now. If I find I have a problem with this I can just put a piece of foam under each target area to keep it raised, and foam will be able to squish down with every dart hit and shouldn't effect the darts gripping the holes. I am worried about the problems with keyboard hacks, that's why I would rather use a pre-built encoder board.

Shape D.:
I won't need a pad for the outside (zero) scoring area. I'll be building seperate software that will understand that if you push the next player button before it registers 3 dart hits, that you missed 1-3 darts somewhere along the line and will score those missing throws 0. So everyone is on the honor system to make sure they don't don't re-throw missed darts (or manually score by pressing a target area).

My biggest question is how do I go about mapping out the matrix on the dart board? Anyone have experience with this? Maybe someone from Groovy Game Gear?

[Mario]

What do you think the best way to wire the dartboard into the PC would be?

I think the easiest thing would be to find a keyboard that has at least 10 contacts on each side of its matrix. Wiring the dartboard to this would mean that each dart segment would trigger a different keypress to the PC. And since you only have to worry about one keypress at a time, you don't have to worry about ghosting.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I've got a dartboard that I may consider wiring to a PC. Please post the software when you write it.

Mario

[The Man]

I won't need to pull each dart as the board sits virtical and the weight of the dart pulls the plastic button back off the contact after initial hit. That's the way it works now.

Ok.. my turn for the DUH!  It would have to work this way, didn't think about it long enough I guess

The matrix shouldn't be that hard if you have it apart.  Just follow the traces back for each button and make yourself a little spreadsheet to keep track of the results.  The only other problem I could see is you would have to make the dart board matrix work with the keyboard matrix, or wire each button separate and use an encoder. 

I would think each button separate would be the way to go, but you would have to cut each trace on the dart board so all contacts are unique.  I wouldn't know the best way to attack it without seeing it.  Maybe you could post some pic's of it.

TM

[paigeoliver]

ALso, if you live anywhere that they have auctions then you might want to see if you can pick up a real coin-op dartboard that is dead. I got one for $25 once that didn't power up. It actually worked, for some reason you had to power it up twice, turn it on, then off, then on.

[Fusion Disaster]

I figured out how to map the dart board matrix. On the PCB there is two, 10-pin sockets, that the two thin plastic connection sheets slide into (each having 10 connections). So to map the matrix, I powered on the PCB, fired up a game of 4-player 301, and took my time connecting one pin from each row to the rest.

Example: I labeled the top row A-J, and the bottom row 1-10. I then connected A to 1 and wrote down what score came up on the board LCD. In my case it happened to be single #6. I then connected A to 2 = triple #6, A to 3 = double #6, etc. Continueing on till I had mapped out all 100 connections. I found that most of the position 5 & 10 were not mapped. Totalling 82 connections, this was due to each single being mapped individually. When I go to connecting mine, I'll combine the two single scores for each number, leaving me with 62 connections (like The Man stated above).

Now I just need to wire in the connections to the PC and get the software written. Shouldn't be too hard.

What do you think the best way to wire this in would be? Do I need to split out the 10x10 matrix through terminals to give me 62 individual connections and then wire this into a encoder board (IPAC, KeyWiz, etc.). Or is there a way to just wire up 20 connections (10x10 matrix) and then decipher the A1, A2, A3 ... through creative wiring, or the software I eventually build?

[Mario]

What do you think the best way to wire this in would be? Do I need to split out the 10x10 matrix through terminals to give me 62 individual connections and then wire this into a encoder board (IPAC, KeyWiz, etc.). Or is there a way to just wire up 20 connections (10x10 matrix) and then decipher the A1, A2, A3 ... through creative wiring, or the software I eventually build?

Did you see my response above? All (or nearly all) PC keyboards use the same method as your dartboard. Hitting a key connects two inputs from each side of a matrix. If you find a keyboard that has at least 10 inputs on each side of the matrix (finding a suitable one is probably going to be the most difficult part), it would be very easy to wire the dartboard to it. Each of your dartboard's A-J connections would wire directly to the keyboard's A-J connections; ditto for the 1-10 connections. When done, each dartboard hit would trigger a single keypress. Once wired up and connected to a PC, you can simply figure out what keypress each dart segment triggers. Then just build your software around that.

I hope I explained this well enough.

Mario

[Fusion Disaster]

Mario: Okay I understand what you mean now. Before I thought you were saying I should do a full keyboard hack (mapping it's matrix out), and then map the combined keys (A1, D6, J10, etc.) to the hacked keyboard. A direct 10x10 to 10x10 mapping would be a lot easier, and appears to be a simple method. Now to see if I can find a 10x10 matrix keyboard. Seems the spare I have at home is a 8x12, would that work?

[Mario]

Mario: Okay I understand what you mean now. Before I thought you were saying I should do a full keyboard hack (mapping it's matrix out), and then map the combined keys (A1, D6, J10, etc.) to the hacked keyboard. A direct 10x10 to 10x10 mapping would be a lot easier, and appears to be a simple method. Now to see if I can find a 10x10 matrix keyboard. Seems the spare I have at home is a 8x12, would that work?

I've never done this, but I'm almost positive an 8x12 will not work. This means that while hitting some of the segments, you'd be establishing a connection between two contacts on the same side of the matrix, and this won't trigger a keypress. You'll need a minimum of 10 on each side. Like I said earlier, it may be difficult to find a suitable keyboard to hack. So close, and yet so far

[Shooter]

Depending on what games you like to play, some of them require you to hit the inner and outer "single" separately.
I coded up some games in C for a class i had and i used http://www.mostdartgames.com/ and some other sites for the rules.  I wanted to play 321Zap! and my board didn't play it.  I was thinking of doing this exact thing so good luck.
Shooter

[cholin]

What about that printer interface that was posted here.  I think Hoagie made it and it could do quite a few inputs.  Not sure how many, think it was 60.

[SirPoonga]

62?!?!?!?  Most electronic dartboards use a matrix.  Shouldn;t need that much then.

[StephenH]

You could use 2 key encoders, such as a KE72 and a KE24

[Fusion Disaster]

62?!?!?!?

[crashwg]

my e-machine ku-0108 has a 8x16...


and it is very hard to type with nothing but the mylar film which is not labeled!

 

[cholin]

Youll  need more than 10x10 because some keys are your F1-F12 and CAPS, PRNT SCRN, all that crap.

[SirPoonga]

You could make a serial interface.  It would require the right PIC (programmable integrated chip) and a max232 or what ever that TTL to serial chip is.  Make circuit, program PIC, make software to read info form device.

[Fusion Disaster]

You could make a serial interface.

[SirPoonga]

I didn't say it would be simple.  It's actually quite complex and not easy to do.

I was thinking, there are 20 numbers on a dart board with three value areas (two singles that are probably wired as one, a double, a triple) then two contacts for the bullseye. 
That's 63 inputs.  Now assuming it's in a matrix  and 8x8 matric would be perfect.  If you picked up a pci dual parallel port and knew programming you could make an easy interface to it.

[Mario]

Mario suggested I find a keyboard that uses 10x10 or more and then do a direct connection of the two. Seems to me that if I used an IPAC or Keywiz I would have to wire up all 62 combinations independantly for it to interpret it properly.

I was thinking. If only about 62 combinations are really needed, then some of the 10x10 matrix may not be used. You should trace the lines on the mylar sheets and see if some do not route to any of the dart segments. If so, then you may not need all 10 on each side of the matrix, and hence you may be able to find a suitable keyboard.

Mario

[Mario]

I didn't say it would be simple.

[SirPoonga]

I didn't say anything about a keyboard encode.  I said dual parallel port.

A parallel port has 8 data pins.  They can easily be accessed via code.  so with a combination of the two parallel ports you have an 8x8 matrix.

The trick is to get the dartboard to use an 8x8 matrix.  It may not.  You may have to use ingeniuty to convert it to use an 8x8 matrix.

What I sated would be minimum needed.  if your dartboard does have a 10x10 you'd have to convert, modify, whatever is needed to make the idea work.

[Mario]

I didn't say anything about a keyboard encode.

[RandyT]

Ummm.

You don't need 60+ inputs..unless you are interested in playing a game where the rules are not based on score.

The dartboards don't care where you hit them, only the score need be correct.  See where I'm going yet?

These are the numbers you need:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
24
26
27
28
30
32
34
33
36
38
39
40
42
45
48
51
54
57
60
then 2 for the bullseye for a total of 43 total inputs required.  None of this applies if you plan on playing games like "round the clock" or something like that, but if your games focus on score and not position, that's all you need.

RandyT

[SirPoonga]

Right, if all you play is 301.

[SirPoonga]

If you knew PIC programming you could make an IC that sends values via serial or parallel.  Actually, it might not be that hard to do, even for someone who doesn't know much about PIC programming...  maybe i will look into something.

[RandyT]

Right, if all you play is 301.  The fun games like cricket require you to know what you hit   So why limit yourself...

I don't play on the Bar machines, just the one on my wall.  It has a half dozen games that all use scoring, as do the majority of the "rules" for games I looked up on the web before posting.


*EDIT*

Deleted a bunch of incorrect junk about making your own matrix.  Deleted as not to confuse the issue.  SirP's right on this one, needs a special controller...read on...


RandyT

[SirPoonga]

Right, either way you have to make the software.  I think the right PIC with a max232 (or whatever that chip that converts ttl to serial) would be an elegant solution.  Could get a serial to usb convertor for newer machines.

I was looking at my dartboard.  It does it with 19 pins.  11 for one contact sheet, 8 for the other.  Quite interesting on how it does it.
On one sheet one pin will account for the numbers 8 and 13, etc.. for each pair of numbers across form each other, and one for bullseye.  That's the constact sheet with 11.  The other sheet 4 pins handle one half of the board, the other 4 handle the other half.  Within those 4 pins one pin handles single, one double, one triple, one part of the bullseye.

How would one wire this up?  Because it depends on the circuit that is being completed.  There is no ground.  How would you wire this to a keyboard encoder?  The encoder would have to know when player 1 button 1 and player 2 button two completed the circuit to each other.  I don;t see how this could be done with a keyboard encoder.

If pics need to be take to understand the dartboard I can do that.

[RandyT]

Right, either way you have to make the software.  I think the right PIC with a max232 (or whatever that chip that converts ttl to serial) would be an elegant solution.  Could get a serial to usb convertor for newer machines.

I was looking at my dartboard.  It does it with 19 pins.  11 for one contact sheet, 8 for the other.  Quite interesting on how it does it.
On one sheet one pin will account for the numbers 8 and 13, etc.. for each pair of numbers across form each other, and one for bullseye.  That's the constact sheet with 11.  The other sheet 4 pins handle one half of the board, the other 4 handle the other half.  Within those 4 pins one pin handles single, one double, one triple, one part of the bullseye.

How would one wire this up?  Because it depends on the circuit that is being completed.  There is no ground.  How would you wire this to a keyboard encoder?  The encoder would have to know when player 1 button 1 and player 2 button two completed the circuit to each other.  I don;t see how this could be done with a keyboard encoder.

If pics need to be take to understand the dartboard I can do that.

Hmm......I may have spoken too soon....for some reason I was thinking there was a ground plane in there, rather than a mylar keyboard style matrix.

I need to see the matrix.  If you want to take pic, that would be cool.  In the meantime, I'll tear mine apart and take a peak inside.

RandyT

[SirPoonga]

http://photobucket.com/albums/v472/SirPoonga/dart/

Mine's an English Mark Darts brand.

Without a ground plane how do you detect that?  I've only done simple PIC programming.  At the moment I can not think how to interpret this.

[RandyT]

Yep!  I'm a DOPE!  

You are right.  I thought maybe these things could be modded, but not with the mylar stuff....

No ground plane, means no way to make this work without using a REAL keyboard encoder (or least one with an actual matrix).

I can make a matrixed KeyWiz, no problem.  The only thing that is concerning me at the moment is the size of the matrix.

SirP, your's and mine appear to be almost identical.  Looks like an 8x11 matrix, which I can tweak firmware for in few minutes.

A matrix that is 10x10 would take some more effort. 

Should I go ahead and look into this?  The result would look to the PC like a USB Keyboard.

Let me know, I'd be happy to look into it.

RandyT

[SirPoonga]

Well, I'd first research other dartboards.

[Fusion Disaster]

It's been a while since I checked back on here. Lots of discussion going now, good to see.

SirPoonga: My dart board looks like yours, using mylar sheets to make up the contacts. Only difference is I have 10 contacts off each sheet. I mapped the whole matrix, not sure you want to see all of it, but I labeled one sheet A-J and the other 1-10. It ended up using every contact except A5-H5, and A10-J10. 82 contacts in all. I'll take some pics tonight of the board, mylar sheets, contacts, the mapped matrix, and I'll post them up here for you all.

Ground Plane: I was wondering this myself. How the heck would I wire this up? Sounds like you've all hashed it out, we can't. Going to need a matrix encoder.

RandyT: We really need to have at least 62 of the inputs recognized for any good dart gaming. Without Cricket there just isn't any point. And some games need to recognize the two single scoring sections seperate too, so that would bump it up to the full 82 inputs.

If your able to build an encoder for this application, it sounds like you'll have the corner on a new market. I know most of the folks on here would be willing to buy them from ya. Just need to build them so they'll work with a variety of encoder styles. Like my 10x10 or the 8x11 mentioned above. We'ld also need a nice easy way to connect it to the mylar sheets.

As far as config software I think SirPoonga has it right. Something that displays a dart board and tells you to press a specific scoring section, and then records that key stroke.

[RandyT]

I'm really going to have to give all of this some thought.  8x11, no problem.  10x10...might be a problem...

But user selectable matrix size??  I dunno...

Any chance of getting some pictures of that 10x10 mylar matrix?

RandyT

[SirPoonga]

But user selectable matrix size??

[Fusion Disaster]

RandyT: Yeah I'll post up some pics tonight. I was going to post some last night, but the digital camera batteries died. Going to stop off today and get some new ones.

Here is something worth noting. I found this site today. It's a write-up on how a few guys from Harvard hacked their electronic dartboard and wired it up to a parralel port. They then wrote up some custom software for it. It's a really interesting project. Maybe we can use their design? Or at the very least it might help RandyT work on designing an interface for us.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021017065130/http://ice.fas.harvard.edu/~sander/dip/
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mcarbone/projects/281paper.pdf

Let me know what your thoughts are on this.

[Fusion Disaster]

Looks like this article was also posted up on Slashdot.com a while back:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/20/0836216&mode=thread&tid=137

One guy had some interesting info to share:

"This project is impressive -- i saw that they're not EE's, so they had a hard time figuring out how the contact sheets are picking up dart throws. They came up with a good work-around, but i'll explain how the thing was supposed to work -- (i'm doing a similar implementation to this for my senior EE project).

WIRING:

Contact sheet 1:
Basically, the grid is broken down into two halves. one of the contact sheets connects full wedges (ie, 20, 19, etc) across the single/double/triple boundaries together with another wedge on the other half. Therefore, there's 10 wires (20/2 = 10)

Contact sheet 2:
contact sheet two connects all the point values on each half...so, for half #1, one wire connects all singles, one wire connects all doubles, etc... one wire connects all singles on half #2, etc...there's 7 wires total, because one of them is used for bull's eye

Implementation (time division multiplexing):
send a logic pulse down each of the 10 wires in contact sheet #1 really fast, in a loop. Read as input on the rings...so, if you read that there was a single scored on the first half, just check where you sent the last pulse down -- deduct which was hit.

i dunno, i guess this is boring, but in case anybody was interested "

[SirPoonga]

Yeah, old news.  The meat of the project is no longer online.  Many paralle port dartboard hacks where out in the wild about 4 years ago.

If one could make this USB that's the way I'd go for a commercial project.  For a DIYer there's nothing wrong with lpt port.