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Just closing out this thread. The soldering was very bad, and this was the cause of the malfunction. Short circuits everywhere.
What is the resistance you measure when you measure the 680K resistor (with no power applied, circuit not active)?
Our kit uses a 680K resistor with 1% precision because it needs to be very close to 680K to work. A 5% precision resistor can be WAY off and the circuit does not work.
Did you adjust the 100K potentiometer? If you did not include one in your circuit, now you know why. It is on the Video Experimenter to finely adjust the 680K resistance in the circuit.
Very nice build! I like the case. If there are any technical details you can share about how you are driving the speaker, please let us know. A lot of people would like to drive a loud speaker.
When you have some pictures, I’d like to add this to the gallery: http://nootropicdesign.com/defusableclock/gallery.html
Sorry to hear you’re having problems. Have you gone through the Troubleshooting Guide? [url]http://nootropicdesign.com/defusableclock/build/#troubleshooting
[/url]Do you have a multimeter to test connections, etc?
Please feel free to send clear photographs of the front and back of the board to support@nootropicdesign.com. I can take a look and possibly help diagnose the problem.
The Defusable Clock is simply a custom Arduino device that you can program using the Arduino IDE. If you don’t know about Arduino development, see the web site: http://arduino.cc
The source code is downloadable from here: http://nootropicdesign.com/defusableclock/hack.html
The beeping sound during the countdown is generated in the function countdown(). This is the code you would modify.
Oh, I thought it would be a bit louder. I don’t have a simple solution for you, as you need to amplify the signal significantly to get a louder sound. A microcontroller output pin isn’t designed to deliver more than 30-40mA of current and isn’t suitable for generating that much sound energy. You need an amplifier of some kind.
The voltage is 5V. The piezo buzzer is driven with a 5V PWM signal (a square wave making it oscillate). A speaker would sound similar but more of a clear tone and louder.
Hi helm-2-108,
I think you’ll get much better volume from a small 8-ohm speaker (found in many products, or very cheap). I believe you should use a resistor in series with the speaker. See this page for some more info:
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/toneVery nice! This looks great, and could be the basis for a new game. I have created a zip file for easy download and installation into the Arduino sketchbook folder. Thanks for this contribution!
The ATmega328 microcontroller has 2K of SRAM and runs at 16MHz clock speed. The games for Hackvision push it to the absolute limit. There are literally only a few bytes of memory available after I programmed Space Invaders and Asteroids. I had to program very cleverly just to cram those games into the constrained environment.
As for current, the onboard voltage regulator can supply 100mA. I’m not sure what kind of controller you envision, so it’s hard to say if you would be drawing any current…
You can’t use the Serial library when using TVout. Use pollserial to write to the serial monitor program on your computer.
This is a limitation of the TVout library, not the Video Experimenter.
I really recommend keeping electronics in your checked luggage. DON’T carry it on. There are quite a few articles about how to travel with DIY electronics. Here’s a recent one that linked to the Defusable Clock product (for obvious reasons!)
http://grathio.com/2012/04/flying-with-homemade-electronics/
You really should not try to take unassembled kit or assembled circuit board in carry on luggage. when they see that on the X-ray you WILL have problems. The assembled circuit board will make TSA freak out. And if you have problems, nootropic design has problems — our name is on the board. 🙂
The best solution is to ship the electronics, not fly with them. Priority Mail International small flat rate box is only $16.95. It’s slow, but if you have lead time, that’s the way to go. I don’t know how to ship it back to the US, though.
Let us know how everything turns out — or maybe we’ll hear about you in the news. 🙂
Good luck, friend!
