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Dart Board Hack (Help with wiring)

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The Man:


--- Quote from: Fusion Disaster on April 06, 2005, 06:01:38 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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:


--- Quote from: Fusion Disaster on April 07, 2005, 12:46:25 pm ---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?

--- End quote ---

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?

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