It's been a busy week at Nerd Towers, but only because we found ourselves in the strange position of having quite a few events in the social diary! While this does mean that we've managed to get out and see the sun for a few hours at at time it also means fewer hours in front of the computer/etching tank/soldering iron.

Wednesday was the Brighton and Hove Petanque Club Quiz Night at the Iron Duke. Luckily we teamed up with a couple of other members so that our ignorance of all things cool and cultured didn't become too apparent. In fact, we hid our ignorance so well that we won the quiz and each took home a bottle of bubbly!

A lot of the week has been spent in preparation for the Brighton Robot talk "introduction to microcontollers". Lots of kits had to be made up, containing breadboards, wire jumpers, microchips, resistors, leds - all the kind of junk you'd normally find attached to a microchip in fact. In a talk spanning a massive three hours (include beer and fag breaks) everyone managed to get an LED flashing in response to an input signal/button press. We're not quite ready to build a robot army to take over the world, but it's a step in the right direction!

Speaking of RobotBrighton, Robot Steve of BotBuilder fame, spent some time using MS Messenger and a webcam to demonstrate his exciting new Etch-a-Bot.
He's already using an LCD display for his project (pre-built from SparkFun) which allows the user to draw a path on the screen, using a small joystick. The bot can then be put into "playback mode" and it will rove about, following the path drawn on the screen. Pretty impressive stuff!

Sunday saw the first Brighton and Hove Petanque Newcomers Doubles contest. In all, twenty-one people turned up to play: new players and old hands mixed up to form doubles teams with one of each player in each team (except for one "trebles" team made up with the extra player!).

It was an excellent day and everyone enjoyed both the social and competitive aspect of the games. Each team played a total of six games, and prizes were awarded to the top three teams on the day. Team Nerd managed to scrape in sixth - a row of losses, one after the other, broken by a single solitary win towards the end of the day was just enough to avoid taking home the wooden spoon!

It was also an ideal opportunity to try out my game scoring device. Unfortunately, it was still only at the breadboard stage so I couldn't demonstrate it, although it certainly generated some interest.
A website for recording and displaying game results is already under way and the idea is to eventually link the two - so after playing your game (petanque, darts, snooker, whatever) and recording the results on the device, they can be uploaded to a website where they are automatically assembled into a league table and the winner(s) displayed for everyone to see.

More details will be posted here as they become available.

It was only a few days ago that this prototype was a whimsical idea and now it's sat on my desk, all lit up and working. It's taken a few micros to get here (see previous posts about how plugging a chip in the wrong way round is not a good idea!) but my new Game Score Keeping Device is almost ready to put into a housing and try out for real!

The LCD display includes a backlight
but this photo shows that the contrast
needs some adjustment!

This early prototype uses a 16F628A chip, not one of the bigger, beefier 18F series. In fact, the functionality and data storage have had to be simplified to get everything to fit into the massive 2k program memory space! Now when a game starts, you simply move the cursor over the two existing team names to change them. In the 18F series, a database of existing team names can be used to select a name instead of having to type one in every time.

Although ideal for prototyping, the 2k program limit in the 16F is already causing a few problems (functionality has had to be reduced to get the code to compile!). The final version will definitely use the 18F series chip for a couple of reasons:

First, you get an enormous 24k of program memory. Seriously, that's a lot of programming space. Plus connection to the PC can be made using onboard USB instead of serial (the 16F has a built in USART but no USB). And you get more eeprom memory space. And - most importantly of all - the 18F series is also available as 18LF which means is supports lower voltage operation (2.5V) so the whole thing will be able to run off just two AAA batteries, instead of the four it takes now.

I've yet to try one of these out, but a trip to the local Co-Op looks likely following this excellent review of a new solderless breadboard:
It's called TortillaBoard and looks like an exciting development in the world of solderless prototyping....
http://www.seattlerobotics.org/Encoder/apr98/breadbrd.html

I've been working to get my new game score keeping device up and running in time for the Brighton and Hove Petanque tournament this Sunday. I'd coded it up pretty quickly, but when it came to saving the results to EEPROM, I quickly discovered not just the limit of the available memory, but the program limit of the 16F628A. I'd filled up my allocated 2k of program memory and still had about 40-50 lines of code left to go!

A bit of jiggery-pokery and some sub-routine optimisations and I managed to squeeze the entire code down to just 1600 words (but sacrificed some nice bits in order to get it working).

I was keen to see it working in hardware and dumped it all to a chip.
I plugged it into the breadboard and fired it up.
Nothing.
Zilch.
Zero.
Nada.

Then something.
A small wisp of smoke.
Then a lot of smoke. Holy crap! I'd plugged the micro in upside down, forcing 5v onto its ground pins and driving the 5v low. It's been a long while since I've done that. But it goes to show that even when you think you know what you're doing, there's no room for complacency! I could have fried my USB port just now.
Thankfully the only thing I lost was a cheap 99p microchip!

But like all good nerds, I quite like the odd sci-fi action movie. And the new Star Trek movie has it all! Action, humour, characters, lasers, alien monsters. You name it, it's in there. And - surprisingly - it's really well done.

I went along to the local Odeon on Wednesday only because it was buy-one-get-one-free with the Orange Wednesday promotion and not really expecting much from this film. After all, I'd seen the trailer and everyone knows they only put the best bits in there, don't they?

There's not much to give away - the film concentrates on how the original Star Trek members got together and ended up on the Enterprise. It's been really well tied in to the original 60s TV series, and you can see the relationships between the characters building up and there are plenty of references back to the old series to keep Trekkie fans happy (I didn't get a lot of them, but a lot of people gave a knowing laugh at various points in the film, suggesting that if I knew a bit more about Star Trek in general, I took could get in on the joke).

Even if you've never watch William Shatner et al in the original, this is still a movie worth shelling out for - and on a big screen with the effects and fantastic sound system, it's far better than watching a pirate copy downloaded off the net in a tiny little 320x240 window.

In short, it's great. Go see it!

Anyone like messing about with robots?
Anyone live in/near Brighton?
Anyone a member of the RobotBrighton group?

Vladimir Soso (author of the PIC simulator and basic compilers software) has put together not one, not two, but THREE fantastic special deals for all members of RobotBrighton.

He's offering the PIC simulator for just €18 instead of 29. That's nearly 40% off! And if you're serious about PIC programming, you can't miss the amazing PIC18 + USB bundle he's put together for just €45.

Check out the email below from Vlad and grab yourself a bargain....

Dear members of RobotBrighton,

For a limited period of time, you can take advantage
of the following special offers to get the licenses for
OshonSoft.com software at convenient prices.

Special Offer #1 (18 euros):
- PIC Simulator IDE personal license
- PIC basic compiler 32-bit math support
- PIC basic compiler structured language support
Online payment can be completed by following the link:
http://www.oshonsoft.com/directorder.php?pid=30

Special Offer #2 (36 euros):
- PIC Simulator IDE personal license
- PIC basic compiler 32-bit math support
- PIC basic compiler structured language support
- PIC18 Simulator IDE personal license
- PIC18 basic compiler 32-bit math support
- PIC18 basic compiler structured language support
- PIC10F Simulator IDE personal license
Online payment can be completed by following the link:
http://www.oshonsoft.com/directorder.php?pid=31

Special Offer #3 (45 euros):
- PIC18 basic compiler USB support personal license
- PIC Simulator IDE personal license
- PIC basic compiler 32-bit math support
- PIC basic compiler structured language support
- PIC18 Simulator IDE personal license
- PIC18 basic compiler 32-bit math support
- PIC18 basic compiler structured language support
- PIC10F Simulator IDE personal license
Online payment can be completed by following the link:
http://www.oshonsoft.com/directorder.php?pid=32

These special offers will expire on June 9, 2009.

Best regards,
Vladimir
OshonSoft.com