Electronic Dart Scoreboard...

[zorbzz]

What a joke.
You guys had a guy ready to help and program, make schematic and well virtually build this whole thing for you and all you had to do was tell him what parts you were going to get and you couldnt even do that.
Its been a long time and i really dont blame him if his help has expired.
Good luck designing your project without the designer.

It doesnt help the real people who need help and are willing to put in their own effort at all.
Slackers!

 

[dbrez8]

@zorbzz. Any desire to help or are you just trolling?

Seriously though, finding a new job forced me to put this project on hold unfortunately. Things have now settled down and I'm reviewing the schematic that vne147 designed. Once complete I'll finalize the BOM and get to purchasing, building, and testing. I'm hoping that vne147 or maybe another member of the community is willing to help with the schematic review. Pretty please?

 

[dbrez8]

. Its not clear to me how the following scenario would work..
15 has 1 LED on, 16 has 2 LEDs on... is this possible? it looks to me that it is not given the bus and control, or perhaps i'm not totally getting it. please help if you can or let me know if you need a better explaination.

Let me explain better...
Given the schematic, how do i have LED1,2,&7 on, but LED8 off? It seems to me that since Q9&10 are both "on", then 8 has to be on while 7 is on. Is that right? Or perhaps the design considers a duty cycle for the bus?

 

[vne147]

I haven't been keeping up with the board a lot lately. I'm going through a bit of a change in my life right now. I got laid off from my job and I'm in the process of moving (thanks to the coherent and spectacular new direction in our nation's space program). My workshop is packed up and on the way to storage at the moment and to add insult to injury, the computer that I usually use to do all my micro programming died. I'm not going to be able to do much in the way of this project for a while. So, I'm afraid you lost your window of opportunity for the time being as zorbzz kind of bluntly suggested.

I will try to answer your most recent question though. Each one of the six LEDs in each point bank (i.e. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and bull) are connected to a discreet output pin on the PIC. For example, the pin RA1 is connected to LEDs 1, 7, 13, 19, 25, 31, and 37. When pin RA1 goes high the anodes of all those LEDs will go high but only the row with the active transistor will allow current to flow and light the LED. The software would have been written so that the output from pins RA1, RA2, RA3, RA4, RA5, and RE0 changes depending on which row's transistor is on and only one row would be on at any given time. This is referred to as multiplexing. The PIC would just continuously cycle through the rows so fast that the eye could not see it and it would appear to the user that all rows were on continuously.

I'll try to locate the schematic file for this project but I know it was on my computer that died and I don't remember how recently I backed it up. I'll check and see. Long story short, you can study the schematic all you want but it is going to be useless without the software on the PIC. Maybe someone else can help you along until I get back up and running at some as of yet undetermined later date.

Sorry.

 

[dbrez8]

@vne147. Very sorry to hear about your job. Best of luck finding a suitable replacement and with the move.

Your explanation of the bus is understood and kind of what I figured was the case. Thanks for that. Again, I plan to use Arduino rather than PIC, but Arduino should be able to support multiplexing as well. So all is good.

If you can locate the schematic then that would be great, otherwise no worries. The hardware layout that you provided already proves invaluable as it would have taken me 10x as long to figure it out myself (if at all). Thanks again for the help your provided thus far. I think I have enough to continue the project on my own at this point.

My plan is as follows:

1. Finish draft BOM
2. Buy parts for testing the hardware design and to begin Software design
3. Figure out how to make Arduino make the hardware do what I want
4. Finalize BOM, functions, specs, etc
5. Build final product and post all relevant information, documentation, code, etc.

I'll continue to post to this thread with status updates and as questions arise. I also foresee starting a thread in the Arduino forums for help in programming that. I'll post a link to this when needed.

 

[vne147]

Luckily it appears I did back up my Eagle files before the crash. I attached a zip file with the schematic and all the libraries that I created or modified for this project. I think you have all the libraries you'll need but let me know if some part isn't found or if something looks weird. Also, I encourage you to test as much of this circuit as you can before committing to the entire build. I never physically built or tested anything for this project. The schematic is what I came up with as kind of a rough first hack. There might be mistakes an/or easier ways to do things. There's my disclaimer. Good luck.

 

[dbrez8]

Awesome. Thanks.

Now to go download Eagle..

 

[dbrez8]

Hi. A question came up regarding a simple part of the circuit. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Given the circuit attached that is used to show "301", "401", "501", and "CRI" in the 14seg displays depending on how the switch is thrown, why are all the diodes I circled in blue necessary?? Are they just on the schematic as a reminder that the 14seg are actually LED's? or are these additional diodes necessary for some reason? How come? I'm just trying to understand what's going on in the circuit. Thanks.

 

[mneary]

Without the diodes, all the terminals of the game select switch would end up connected together. The diodes, allowing current in only one direction, allow the switched signals to act independently.

 

[dbrez8]

OK I get it now. I had to follow some of the current paths in my head to see how things get a bit screwy w/o the diodes in place. thanks.

 

[dbrez8]

Here's another.
The circuit designer recommended use of 4pcs of SAA1064, 4-digit LED-driver with I2C-Bus interface, to drive 4 different 3x7seg displays. I want to add a 5th 3x7seg display..

The SAA1064 datasheet says
"Address pin ADR - Four different slave addresses can be chosen by connecting ADR either to VEE, 3/8 VCC, 5/8 VCC or VCC. This results in the corresponding valid addresses HEX 70, 72, 74 and 76 for writing and 71, 73, 75 and 77 for reading. All other addresses cannot be acknowledged by the circuit."
That is, each of the 4 chips are addressed by giving each ADR pin a specific voltage. But is says only up to 4 addresses are supported...

does anyone have experience with I2C or this chip specifically? what is the best way to add my additional 3x7seg? can i use the 1 extra 7seg from each of the 4 chips i have? or do i need to create a whole new Bus for the new chip? im not sure if the former is possible when coding the display via I2C. Anyone have an idea?

Updated schematic added for clarity..

 

[bb696]

Yes. This is my plan anyways. To publish all the necessary info to DIY, and possibly offer pre-built ones if time permits.

That is, if @crudeau is still willing to help and I get off my a$$ and get a move on. I'll get back on track this weekend. promise

dbrez8 have you finished your project & how did it come out? I was looking to buy a dartmaster and came across this forum, are you still iterested in selling a pre-built one?

 

[ChrisNI]

I am thinking of making something similar and found this thread. Has anyone had any luck with this?

 

[megagyger]

I designed one last year, wireless keypad data entry with a dual LCD display, also an android app can be used for data entry, my algorithm had error detection and negated the need for counting. Msp430 based.
What you want to know?

 

[ChrisNI]

I designed one last year, wireless keypad data entry with a dual LCD display, also an android app can be used for data entry, my algorithm had error detection and negated the need for counting. Msp430 based.
What you want to know?

Basically everything lol

 

[megagyger]

Basically everything lol

Well youre going to have to me something to go on. I can guide you through it but im not going to do it for you. Have you basic block diagram, what micro you using etc

 

[ChrisNI]

Well youre going to have to me something to go on. I can guide you through it but im not going to do it for you. Have you basic block diagram, what micro you using etc

I want to have a dual LCD display using one wired keypad. I am looking in to using a pic16f877a or a pic18f45k22 to do the counting. I am new to programming so this is going to be difficult for me.

 

[pgrayem]

I to am extremely keen to get involved in this thread and hopefully revive it. I'm currently studying electronic engineering in uk and my aim is to build a scorer very similar to the one the original poster had set out to build. It is the only thread I've found that goes into the sort of detail I am looking for to get started at least or be able to work out how to get going (ish!).

My trade is programming (currently Ada) so the programming side should be ok for me. It's more the circuit setup up that I'll need a little direction and the process of pic programming as this will be my first go!!!

Hopefully we can get some interest into here. As I was gutted when I get to page 3 and realised it had never been finished!!

Cheers for now, p