Nintendo Extension Ctrl Breakout Board
Now that the library is finished, it’s time to start putting it to use! The first step is building a better breakout board for connecting to the extension controllers.
Assembling Time Circuit Display PCBs
The time is finally here! After a short hiatus to work on the McCree Hammershot project, I’m back to building my time circuits. The display circuit boards have arrived and it’s time to get them assembled and running!
McCree Hammershot Controller: Custom PCB
I’ve got buttons, a rotary encoder, a touch-sensitive antenna, and a fancy RGB LED. Now it’s time to tie everything together with a custom circuit board!
Nerf Hammershot McCree Controller
Using a Nerf Hammershot and an Arduino, I built my own custom video game controller for the character of McCree in Overwatch. Overview The Arduino inside of the Nerf gun acts as a mouse and keyboard, sending HID commands over USB to the computer. The trigger and hammer are wired to buttons, and the cylinder is wired to a rotary encoder. Pulling the trigger fires, sliding the hammer back “fans the hammer”, and spinning the cylinder reloads. The gun also includes an inertial measurement unit (IMU) with an accelerometer and a gyroscope. This allows me to track movement for aiming. McCree’s…
Designing the Time Circuit Display PCB
It’s been a long road to get to this point, but I’m finally at the stage where I can design the printed circuit board (PCB) for the time circuit display.
Making a Time Circuit Display Schematic
I’ve chosen the LED displays, found a matrix driver, and determined the final positions for each LED display on the faceplate. The next step in the time circuits project is to build a dedicated circuit board for each display. This process starts with creating an electrical schematic.
Back to the Future Time Circuits
The goal of this project is to build my own personal replica of the DeLorean’s “Time Circuits”, as featured in the Back to the Future movie trilogy. I’ll need to build custom time circuit displays, a custom keypad for changing the date, and screen-accurate enclosures. To make everything function, I’ll need to design and program some embedded circuits to control it all.
Building Musical Floppy Drive Breakout Boards
With power taken care of, the next step is to connect the data lines (step, direction, and drive select) to the Arduino. The easy way to do this is to carefully count the pin numbers, attach a female header cable to each pin, connect the step / direction pins to the correct Arduino numbers, and join the grounded connections on a breadboard. That’s the quick and easy way. But it’s also: A.) Tedious to set up / take down B.) Possible to make a wiring mistake C.) Prone to disconnects How do we fix all three of these problems? We build a…