I have a confession...

[aderp1]

I have a confession to make...

A while ago, I posted a topic concerning the creation of a gamebuino clone. I figured that if so many people on this forum could do it, so could I. The only problem is that I had absolutely no knowledge of physical electronics whatsoever- I'm more of a programming guy. I had hoped that I could throw a few rocks around in a dark room and figure out what the heck it was that I was actually doing. Unfortunately, it was not as simple as I thought. Many months later, I have only been able to muster a half-hearted, breadboard confined piece of electronics with a mess of tangled wires heading into the great unknown. Can anyone help me? I could figure out the connections, except the schematics do not use an Arduino Uno, and the connections have different names from what is printed (ex. There is no pin on the 84x48 LCD that is labeled as "External Clock" and the VCC connection seems to lead to nowhere, etc.) Thank you for your help.

[Myndale]

I can help aderp. I used a Uno myself while I was waiting for my first Gamebuino to arrive:

http://gamebuino.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=468&p=683#p683

Unfortunately you'll need to recompile the games you want to play with a slightly modified version of library that ignores battery monitor and light levels (Uno doesn't expose the required pins). Here's the pin-out for the peripherals:

Nokia 5110 LCD:

• Uno D13 -> CLK
• Uno D11 -> MOSI
• Uno A2 -> D/C
• Uno A1 -> CE (you also need a 10k resistor between CE and +VCC)
• Uno A0 -> RST
• Uno D5 -> LIGHT
• Uno VCC -> VCC and External clk
• Uno Gnd -> GND

Buttons (all buttons have one side tied to GND):

• Uno A3 -> Button C
• Uno D4 -> Button A
• Uno D2 -> Button B
• Uno D9 -> Button 0 (left)
• Uno D7 -> Button 1 (up)
• Uno D6 -> Button 2 (right)
• Uno D8 -> Button 3 (down)

Speaker:

• Uno D3 -> Speaker (you'll need to pass it into a drive transistor with a flyback diode, check the schematic for details)

SD (make sure you get a breakout board that's 5V tolerant):

• Uno D10 -> CS
• Uno D11 -> DI
• Uno D13 -> SCK
• Uno D12 -> DO
• Uno VCC -> VCC
• Uno GND -> GND

i2C (again make sure you use 5V tolerant devices if you're on a Uno, otherwise you'll need to step the voltages down):

• Uno A4 -> SDA
• Uno A5 -> SCL
• Uno VCC -> VCC
• Uno GND -> GND

[aderp1]

Ok, well, I've wired the buttons and the screen to the Uno, extracted the libraries, so now, how do I recompile a game (pong, for example) to ignore those missing pins? When I uploaded the pong game without changing anything, the LED's on the screen turned on, then went off. There was no display.

EDIT: I've gotten the display to work (albeit inconsistently). Usually, the LCD is blacked out and the actual game can be seen faintly behind this.

[aderp1]

Hooray! I've fixed the screen problem, it was just an incorrect connection. However, I still have that battery error popping up after a few seconds, which I suspect is due to the Uno's different pins. Does anyone know how to modify the library to get rid of that? Also, the backlight powers off after a few seconds.

[Myndale]

If you open settings.c you'll find the following two #defines that Rodot has helpfully added, change them from 1 to 0:

Code: Select all

#define ENABLE_BATTERY 1 //disable battery monitoring
#define ENABLE_BACKLIGHT 1 //disable automatic back-light


[aderp1]

Thanks, Myndale!