Posts Tagged ‘cool’

Printed Circuit Boards, Yeah I can make those!

Posted: 09/19/2012 in General News
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Through time and patience can come many rewards. After spending over 6 hours yesterday getting my CAD drawing done up correctly, today I both had a successful test and actual circuit board engraved. This has helped to bolster the confidence in my new found capabilities and my tiny little router is holding it’s own!

Now with that said, I still need to invest in a bit more tooling for it as most of these round circles need to have a hole drilled into the center of them for the actual project, however I do not have the proper bits to do so yet. I have found some nice 1/8th in carbide drill sets that will do the job nicely as they go from .03mm up to .2mm which will cover the range I need to drill this micro holes accurately.

But have a view of the video below to see this in action. Updates will be sparse for the next couple of weeks as my part time jobs are pretending to be full time, but that’s ok because I’m in need of the income! But at nights there is still plenty of design work to do and I will remain quite busy.

So, talk with you soon and if you have any questions or find a need for these types of services, please let me know. I’m taking on jobs as they come so I’ll gladly make time for yours!

My Router Has Arrived!

Posted: 09/11/2012 in General News
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Though  I still do not know how to use it properly (and this pic doesn’t even have the axis motors on it yet) you can be rest assured that tomorrow I’ll be playing with this for some time, making sure everything is in its place. There will be a learning curve like anything else and even though it’s a small starter unit, I’ll get the basics of this and the software down before getting into anything bigger. So stay tuned for the next couple of weeks as cool things will be happening soon enough.

Emulator Controller & an identity crisis

Posted: 09/10/2012 in General News
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So I did a commission for a forum member called [FarmerDwight] who was looking for a unique controller used for his emulated NES games on his PC. Though I’ve never been a fan of emulation for many reasons, after finding out his wants I really couldn’t pass up the chance to make this for him. Basically he wanted a controller for his emulated NES games with a USB input. Thats really not that difficult to find as the vast majority of PC controllers are USB anyway. The trick was to get that controller to work while using the original buttons in the Game Boy itself.

Now this really wasn’t much different in theory to many of the other controllers that I’ve built. You have two contacts, one signal, one ground and a tact switch (or PCB pad) that once pressed completes the circuit and registers as a button press for the duration you hold it down. However there was one key difference to what I’ve done in the past and that was the fact that the PCB pads in this case were already integrated with the mother board of the Game Boy.

To make a long story short, that doesn’t work so hot when you have two separate devices trying to function off of the same ground lines. I was getting all kinds of screwy actions when I first powered it on, not to mention the Emulator controller provided went against everything I knew about how PCB pads worked.  This project took me over 10 hours. 2 of which were basic labor and putting together and 8 hours of “WTF is wrong with this thing” troubleshooting.

In the end though, all came out well and though the Game Boy will never work again as a Game Boy, he can still play all the NES, Atari and whatever other emulated consoles out there with 8 buttons or less, including Game Boy.

More info and pics on the MBB forums. But I’m happy with it, and so is the customer which is all that matters! Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to sleep tonight knowing that my router will be arriving in the afternoon tomorrow! Expect a few more cool updates when I break that package open!

Testing of the test box is so far successful!

Posted: 07/25/2012 in Current Project, General News
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So far I have to say that I’m quite pleased that this worked on the first shot and didn’t turn my evening into a lesson on fire safety! In terms of the audio/video, everything worked exactly like it was meant to, a trend I intend to keep up once the regulators arrive in the mail.  Though of course I did once again wire the audio tact switches backwards…so down is up and up is down…and on the SNES-001 Advance I had the left switch as volume up and the right a volume down…I’ll get that right one day.

But as you see, I’ve made a quick demo video of the test and how it works, so please have a look! More info with more progress. Hopefully I’ll have this complete within the week and then I can start the testing of my controller for the computer desk. Until then, just wait!

UPS gets a color show

Posted: 07/24/2012 in Current Project, General News
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How befitting it is that the sacrificed encasement for this project comes from an abandoned product called ColorMorphics?! Though this was simply an unnecessary add-on to the unit while waiting for my regulators to arrive, I figured this would be a nice touch. Though the third LED from the right is still giving me trouble, you can see that all are in place and all are wired up. However, I did make a mistake that I didn’t notice until after I had all the LED’s in place. I wired up all Green LED’s, not Red! I know, the pic above shows blue, that was intentional as that’s not a voltage line, it’s the A/V power line and was supposed to be that way. But man was I surprised (and quite frankly temporarily blinded) when the bright green light came emitting from the unit to my retina! So, it’s a lot brighter than I was anticipating, but that’s really alright and I’m not redoing it at this point.

So after the regulators arrive and I can get those wired up correctly I’ll be able to start the testing of the test box and then back to my desk. Oh, and the pic up top also shows the far left switch being turned on but no light. I didn’t have both power supplies in plugged in so the pic below shows that in working order. More details soon!

CPU/Retro Gaming Desk takes control

Posted: 07/07/2012 in Current Project, General News
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Now there is something very satisfying to see an idea come around into some form of physical manifestation, even if it’s only in appearance. Show above is the painted up/mocked up version of my new controller that will take the job of playing all three of Nintendo’s early generation systems.

This controller will be able to play the NES, SNES and N64 games all from one unit. Using a parallel printer cable and connections, this will automatically flip to the unit that is powered on. The three holes you see in the center there are LED holders and house an LED that will illuminate depending on which unit is on.

It’s got a long way to go yet, but it will be getting there soon and then I can finally put this project to bed! Lots of changes over the year, but will certainly be worth it! As always, have a look at the WorkLog on the MBB Forums to get up to speed!.

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