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Dart Board Hack (Help with wiring)

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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:

--- Quote from: Fusion Disaster on April 06, 2005, 03:19:49 pm ---What do you think the best way to wire the dartboard into the PC would be?

--- End quote ---

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

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