Thanks, it's cool to be back here. ASC's always been a central happenin' place and that doesn't seem to have changed.
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Originally Posted by xav1982
They are the electrical control type sealed box
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Brilliant! I know those things - great choice!
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Originally Posted by PrIeSt
Will you be selling these for other fields Don?
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Sure! I do electronic work as a job, so I would be A-OK with doing a small production run. But no counting chickens before they hatch - there will be a bit more work to be done once this first unit is up and running before that can happen; there are always changes needed that get discovered in the first unit / prototype.
And of course, when it's done the code and diagrams will be available so anyone with the skill and time and desire could make their own (as well as improve it). I'll say right now - a lot of the programming in there right now is pretty ugly and purely of the "make it work" variety.
I can think of like a billion improvements it could use right off the bat and people better at it than I could probably see two billion without even trying.
Here is what one of the dev units looks like right now.
(The RED board sticking out the top is a test for audio playback)
The units are wirelessly connected to each other and scores are synchronized across all of them during a game. The LCD shows not only the status of the current box, but also the statuses of all the others. The pile on the right side of the photo is an LED string. It fills up and down to visually indicate status and ownership. Of course, the LCD also prominently displays current status and ownership at all times.
The LEDs are mainly for indoor use or lower light outdoor use because LEDs aren't all that visible outdoors in bright sunlight. When it comes to daylight-readable indicators I'm a little torn between very high-brightness lights, and motorized brightly-colored signs/flags - and the fewer moving parts the better and the more BB-proof the better. There are surely options I haven't thought of, though. If anyone has any bright ideas on that, I'm all ears!
That all being said, the LED strings are going to be enough for the scope of this first version, which will live mainly indoors for testing.
I was going to address some of the other questions quoted here too but I realized I could answer these and other questions much more efficiently with some "screenshots". I'll do that and post it.