NTC: Behind the Scenes – Blog. by Next Thing https://ntcblogbackup.wpengine.com News & Notes. Process & Projects. No BS. Srsly. Thu, 09 Nov 2017 03:16:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5 The PocketC.H.I.P. Cyberpunk Adventure Guide https://ntcblogbackup.wpengine.com/the-pocketc-h-i-p-cyberpunk-adventure-guide/ https://ntcblogbackup.wpengine.com/the-pocketc-h-i-p-cyberpunk-adventure-guide/#comments Thu, 18 May 2017 16:00:04 +0000 http://blog.nextthing.co/?p=1472

The Year 2017An underground community of Pocketeers are creating their own cyberpunk future, hacking their PocketC.H.I.P.s far beyond a traditional game console. What follows is a guide to join their ranks. Jack in. Hack the Planet. Dream of Electric Sheep.

Change the Game with PocketC.H.I.P. & PICO-8

The PICO-8 fantasy console features hundreds of free community made games so there’s always a new game to play. But playing a PICO-8 game is just the beginning. Get into the code and change the game, or start from scratch and make your own! Here are some of the best PICO-8 resources to get you coding.


Phase into PocketC.H.I.P.

Thomas rocks the PocketC.H.I.P. with a lanyard strap.

Your cyberpunk summer requires appropriate music. Score your adventures with Phase, a synth created for PocketC.H.I.P. by Humbletune. Making use of PocketC.H.I.P.’s touch screen and keyboard, any Pocketeer can make beautiful music in a matter of seconds. Make your own song of the summer, accept no substitutes.


LAN Party Way the Hell Off the Grid

Cyberdemons are no match for Mitch and Crunch.

Host a LAN Party on your PocketC.H.I.P. and get your game on way off the grid. Battle through hell and back with DOOM in co-op mode, frag each other in Quake III Arena, and play countless other multiplayer classics. No additional cost, no router, no ethernet connection, and no internet required (after installation).


A Scanner PocketC.H.I.P.

Ari’s scanograph shows this log is all bark and no bite.

Go beyond traditional photography and embrace the strange with PocketC.H.I.P. scanographs. Armed with a PocketC.H.I.P. and a flatbed scanner, you’ll be creating images to make your smartphone photographer friends jealous. Welcome to the scanner PocketC.H.I.P.; a community project kicked off by Pocketeer panicrun while on a walk in the woods outside Berlin. Be sure to share your scanographs with us via Twitter. We’re @nextthingco!


Venture into the Virtual

PockulusC.H.I.P. – Strap it to your face!

PockulusC.H.I.P. is Virtual Reality. Breakout of this world by 3D printing a custom bezel for your PocketC.H.I.P. and DIY VR: here’s how. Play all your favorite homebrew Virtual Boy games in glorious monochrome three dee!


Block off time for Minecraft

With Minecraft on PocketC.H.I.P., adventure is in the palm of your hands. Strike out on your own or grab a Pocketeer friend and play cooperatively. You can even create new buildings and terrain with the Minecraft Python API!


Hack a Speaker into your PocketC.H.I.P.

Examining PocketC.H.I.P.’s back, you’ll find a super secret hidden prototyping area perfect for adding a speaker. Designed as a simple intro to hardware hacking, it’s perfect for beginners and takes less than 20 minutes. Get your hardware hack on here

For those looking to go further into hardware hacking, check out klundry’s addition of Qi wireless charging and community case mods here and here. The PocketC.H.I.P. case mod forum post is also a fantastic (and in depth) read.


Blast from Systems Past

Colecovision on PocketC.H.I.P. – One of many emulators the Pocketeer community has running.

Nostalgic Pocketeers can adventure into systems past. With Playstation, Gameboy Color, MacOS and ColecoVision, DOSBox, and TI-99 emulators running on PocketC.H.I.P., you can relive (or explore for the first time) the history of computing, gaming, and calculators.


Make the Call from PocketC.H.I.P.

Tony using a PocketC.H.I.P. cell phone that Dave built

Clever Pocketeers Juve021 and Rob Baruch transformed PocketC.H.I.P. into a cell phone with the addition of an Adafruit cellular module. With well-documented tutorials, you too can make calls from PocketC.H.I.P.. Headphones port included; no dongle required!


Find Your Way with the PocketC.H.I.P. Navigator

Turn-by-turn navigation with navit

Never get lost with the PocketC.H.I.P. Navigator mod. By adding a GPS module to PocketC.H.I.P., you have access to your location, points of interest and turn-by-turn directions without relying on your phone. Learn more here


PocketC.H.I.P. Tweets!

The RainbowStream Twitter client running on PocketC.H.I.P.

Keep up with the Twittersphere with the RainbowStream twitter application by @dtvd88 on PocketC.H.I.P.. With complete configurability and custom themes, you can do pretty much anything you would from a traditional twitter client. Set it up and get your tweet on! (Tag us! We’re @nextthingco.)


Arduino in a Flash

With one simple command, you can turn your PocketC.H.I.P. into an Arduino flashing machine! Great for flashing in the field where a laptop would be unwieldy.


Customize Your PocketC.H.I.P. Home Screen(s)

Pocketeer Marshmallow wrote the de-facto software for adding icons to your PocketC.H.I.P. home screen. Widely used by the community, this is a must for new PocketC.H.I.P. owners. Simply follow Marshmallow’s tutorial and add custom icons for any application you install heretofore. Those looking for more PocketC.H.I.P. software mods can check more tutorials here.


PocketC.H.I.P. & A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Start your Star Wars Episode VIII preparations today by watching Episode IV on PocketC.H.I.P. presented in ASCII, it’s a must watch for any fans of everyone’s favorite space opera. Shout out to Pocketeer Meowter_space for the heads up!


Behind the Scenes

We’ve made PocketC.H.I.P open source so you can make it anything you want or learn how products are made. If you’d like to learn more about PocketC.H.I.P.’s development, complete with unprecedented behind the scenes footage, check out the PocketC.H.I.P. Time Machine .


More Fun on the Forum

These tips are only scratching the surface. There is a ton of fun to be had in the PocketC.H.I.P. forum. The Pocketeer community is always working on new projects and tips like case mods and new software features. Heck, BrianTheBuilder made his PocketC.H.I.P. draw with a robot arm!!! 

Send us your PocketC.H.I.P. Projects!

We love seeing what Pocketeers are up to. Whether its a case mod or a game made specifically for PocketC.H.I.P., we want to know! Tweet at us or post on the forum!

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This Is How We Made the 7’5″ Tall Mega PocketC.H.I.P. https://ntcblogbackup.wpengine.com/this-is-how-we-made-the-75-tall-mega-pocketc-h-i-p/ https://ntcblogbackup.wpengine.com/this-is-how-we-made-the-75-tall-mega-pocketc-h-i-p/#comments Thu, 26 May 2016 16:00:42 +0000 http://blog.nextthing.co/?p=580

Creating a monstrously large version of PocketC.H.I.P. took three months of planning, and a mad-sprint to finish in time for Maker Faire Bay Area.

Sharps and Jordan designed Mega PocketC.H.I.P. to be a 7’5″ tall working replica of PocketC.H.I.P.. This mega device not only had to look and operate exactly like PocketC.H.I.P., but also had to be entirely powered by C.H.I.P.! And just like Mega C.H.I.P. before it, all of the Mega PocketC.H.I.P. design files had to be open source.

Designing

drafting-crop

Early frame prototypes were draw out on paper and whiteboard until a simple-to-assemble and built-like-a-tank design was achieved. We joked that Mega PocketC.H.I.P. had to survive hordes of children mashing buttons for three days straight –and, no joke, that’s exactly what it was up against.

With every angle and plane measured of PocketC.H.I.P., Sharps and Jordan had to settle on a scale for Mega PocketC.H.I.P.. From the outset, Dave wanted Mega PocketC.H.I.P. to be taller than him. His towering 6’5″ height, available arcade buttons, TV costs, and standard sheet material sizes were all factors determining the final Mega PocketC.H.I.P. scale.

Mega PocketC.H.I.P.’s Mega Plans

An early draft called for using only one sheet of material for the entire surface of Mega PocketC.H.I.P.. This approach is similar to how PocketC.H.I.P. is a single printed circuit board. However, using one single 4′ wide sheet of material would not make Mega PocketC.H.I.P. tall enough. Instead, we used two sheets of 5′ wide material, which allowed us to create a Mega PocketC.H.I.P. with enough height to tower over Dave.

AFRAME

Luckily the scale created by using two 5′ wide sheets worked well with the 100mm arcade buttons that we wanted to use, and made it fairly easy to source a TV with appropriate dimensions. Once the height and width were finalized the Mega PocketC.H.I.P. to PocketC.H.I.P. scale was set at approximately 13.6:1.

With two weeks until Maker Faire we were fairly confident with the design, we just had to build it.

A Two Week Build Sprint

Routing out room for each button

Before the Robots — routing out room for each button

Constructing Mega PocketC.H.I.P. took every moment of the remaining two weeks. Sharps and Jordan led the charge assembling the frame and keyboard, with help from Jerrick. Jordan wired the keyboard with electronics help from Jose and Langley.

The build was a team effort!

Crunch, Jose, Langley, Alex, and Tony created a scaled-up version PICO-8 to meet the newly available screen realestate output from the HDMI DIP, and wrote a program to parse button input from the mega keyboard.

Mega Frame Assembly

Applying the white PVC to Mega PocketC.h.I.P.

Applying the white PVC to Mega PocketC.h.I.P.

Since we wanted the mega pieces to be perfect, and to make assembly faster, we contracted out CNC machines to quickly fabricate the wooden keyboard frame, the white PVC front, all the vinyl graphics and lettering, and metal welded A-frame.

Once all the these pieces were delivered, we assembled the plywood and steel tubing that make up the main A-frame structure of Mega PocketC.H.I.P.. The white PVC exterior, arcade buttons, wiring, and the jumbo 65″ TV all were added shortly thereafter.

Mega Wiring

Wiring the keyboard buttons to a Teensy 3.2

Early version of the keyboard wiring

In the first version of the wiring, we used fancy snap-tight terminals for every place a wire connected with a button. This worked and looked tidy, but we had doubts about the connectors withstanding the heavy use during the faire.

Not willing to take any chances, we completely rewired the keyboard the night before loading it onto a faire-bound truck. The time, we used good old solder to guarantee a reliable, durable connection. It was all hands at the soldering stations for this late night sprint.

Late night team soldering saved the project!

Late night soldering teamwork saved the project! #NoFilter

Each of the sixty Adafruit arcade button was inserted into the PCB plate, then grouped into rows and columns, and wired to the Teensy 3.2 microcontroller.

Mega Keyboard Software

Langley testing the Teensy keyboard code

Langley testing the Teensy keyboard code

The keyboard software runs on the Teensy and continuously scans for simultaneous row and column input. Since no two keys have the same row and column combination, you can determine exactly what key was pressed by reading the two values. This keyboard matrix design is a commonly used solution when you need to build a custom keyboard.

Finishing Touches

Break time!

Jerrick, Sharps, and Jordan carefully applied vinyl lettering to the keyboard.

Adding lettering and artwork to Mega PocketC.H.I.P. required scaling up the silkscreen files we use for PocketC.H.I.P. and used a vinyl printer to cut everything out.

To help precisely place the lettering we pointed a projector showing the desired keyboard layout and aimed it at the blank PVC. With a steady hand and careful eye the lettering was applied without too much hassle, and the mega replica was complete.

Booth Tested, Maker Faire Approved!

We Won! The Make: editors awarded Mega PocketC.H.I.P. two Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon

We Won! The Make: editors awarded Mega PocketC.H.I.P. two Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon

Mega PocketC.H.I.P. withstood three days of intense button mashing and looks nearly as good as when we first unveiled it. All the hard work paid off. We’ve reassembled Mega PocketC.H.I.P. back in the office right next to Mega C.H.I.P. and use it for PICO-8 gaming breaks –especially Crunch Ball.

Did you take any photos of Mega PocketC.H.I.P. at Maker Faire? Share them with us on the forums or tweet at us @nextthingco.

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