Main > Main Forum
Dart Board Hack (Help with wiring)
<< < (7/9) > >>
RandyT:

--- Quote from: SirPoonga on April 17, 2005, 09:36:06 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page

Go to full version