PAW10 - Trifluxx

[matseng]

As mentioned in an earlier post I'll try to do one small PCB project every week and then send for PCB's of it every Monday.

During the last couple of years I've made PCBs in different shapes. Square, Rectangular, Square/Rectangular with round corners, Circular, T-shaped, "Flower"-shaped with arms like RetroTime PAW and boards with various cutouts. But I've never done a triangular or hexagonal board.

So this time I'll do a triangular design. An equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides are equal and I want to have it as large as possible in a 5x5 square PCB. So by rotating it 15 degrees inside the square I can get sides that are 51.7 mm long instead of the 50 mm I get when having the pcb straight along the bottom edge of the square. I admin that the gain is very small, but why not? :-)

Straight - 50 mm edges

Trifluxx1.jpg (27.71 KiB) Viewed 901 times

Rotated 15 degrees and I gain 1.7 mm extra in size. Whoohoo! :-)

Trifluxx2.jpg (26.12 KiB) Viewed 901 times

So, I've decided the shape of the board and now I need to fill it with some functionality as well. Hm.... I know it sounds a bit silly to first the decide on the PCB and then try to come up with what it should do. But why not - the PAW project is all about doing new things in a new way,to boldly go where no PCB designer has gone before. :-)

I'l leaning towards putting three lines of 10 pcs of 0805 smd leds each from the corners in towards the center. And then make some kind of three-person game out of it. Maybe some reaction-time based or maybe something more like ping-pong... And then maybe have a 8 or 10 mm led in the middle as some kind of signalling or common led. I dunno. I have to think about it a bit more.

I could also put a small microphone in the middle that reacts to sound and make something like a three-band VU-meter that will pump the "bars" in sync with the music it picks up.

Well, let's see what I end up with. The week is still young.

Placement of leds

Trifluxx_with_leds.jpg (16.24 KiB) Viewed 901 times

[matseng]

Awww.... This will be really hard to route. It's not fun to try to get the tracks at a close and even spacing when you need to route at
angles not 0/45/90 degrees.

I added circuity for building it with either a 10 mm LED in the middle for "gaming" or a condenser mic for a "VU-meter" toy.

Using a 14 pin PIC as the uC and a '595 shift register for driving the anodes of the leds. If there was a 16 pin PIC I've could have made it without the shift register, but there are no such beast. :-(

(The three circles are meant to be cut off from the main board and connected by wires to the triangle edges.)

[hlipka]

Maybe a one-dimensional pong for 3 persons? So the ball would deflect from the middle to a random person (and maybe even to one itself).

[matseng]

Yes, that sound like a good idea. And maybe with one or two "bot"-players that is getting better and beter if you are playing alone...

[nickjohnson]

Why not route the whole board with the triangle straight, then rotate everything when you're done?

I'm currently routing a hexagonal board, and having equal fun. Why don't any tools have options to lock to arbitrary angles?

[matseng]

I've restarted the layout of the board doing it straight (not angled 15 degrees) this time. I lose 1.5mm in length but it will save me tons of time.

[matseng]

This PAW is a bit late, but Seeed is still busy with the CNY/Spring Festival backlog so it really doesn't matter.... :-)

I ended up with using resistor arrays instead of discrete 0805 resistors to save some space and the board can be used for both a sound reactive flasher or some kind of a 1/2/3-player game if the buttons are cut off and connected to the main board by wires. The center of the board will either have a 5mm thru-hole led for the game version or a condenser microphone for the flasher version.

The board is powered by a cr2032 coin cell mounted at the bottom of the board - all other parts are at the top.

Probably this PAW should have been made on a 10x10 cm pcb, the 5x5 is a bit too tiny. If I'm able to make some decent game on it I might redo it on a 10x10 and add a few leds while I'm at it.

I added one extra button sub-board just for fun (and to get the raw board to look a bit more symmetrical, but there's no real use for it.

(The buttons will be cut off from the triangular main board and connected by wires)

[Sleepwalker3]

A flasher? OK, call the cops! LOL
If this was bigger you could make a safety flashing beacon with superbright LEDs for a car breakdown or similar. Well I guess you could do that even with the smaller size for that matter.

[systemstech]

That looks more like an X wing fighter to me.

[matseng]

Just the outline make me think of some kind of a weather station or a alien structure in a 60'ies SF movie. But the "arms" and the "balls" (hm...) will be cut off before soldering, leaving just the equilateral triangle so it will not look as cool as this.

[systemstech]

the "arms" and the "balls" (hm...) will be cut off .

That hurts.

[rwinscot]

This is a great game idea! I wonder if capacitive touch pads would work? ...so you don't have to cut the arms and balls off. [shudders]