m00dawg
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Texas

It's alive!

I received the boards a few days ago and am happy to report that (almost) everything is working like a champ! I ran into a few issues along the way, but nothing major. One is that the diode is the wrong way on the silkscreen although I caught that before I actually soldered it in place and have already correct the board design. Another problem is that I can't seem to get MIDI output when using LSDJ as a master. The LEDs light up to the BPM from LSDJ so I suspect it has to do with the MIDI side of things. Just not sure what it is. I also don't have +5V working from the GB so I have to power it with USB still (I'm actually using a MintyBoost to supply power through the USB port. Works good enough for now).

I have only tried LSDJ, but mGB is on my list to do probably today. I am going to put together a full article on my band's website and I'll post a link here for the curious. I wanted to add a few things to make it easier for folks building their own (using the Shield design or otherwise), such pinouts for the link cables (which took quite some time to figure out), among other things.

Huge thanks to Trash80 because, damnit, this thing owns face! Once I've figured out the things noted above, I'm going to start work on an all-in-one design, which should save quite a bit of space and let me put it in a nice case, etc. But for now this is rocking out with my GameBoy out!

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

That's super rad!

Theta_Frost
Offline
Milwaukee, WI

Looks good! See how small you can get the final version!  Internal anyone? wink

Apeshit
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Cool project. I still haven't found the time to make an arduinoboy, so I'd like to get my hands on one of these.

Theta_Frost wrote:

Looks good! See how small you can get the final version!  Internal anyone? wink

Internal? But it's a shield...

m00dawg
Offline
Texas
Apeshit wrote:

Cool project. I still haven't found the time to make an arduinoboy, so I'd like to get my hands on one of these.

Theta_Frost wrote:

Looks good! See how small you can get the final version!  Internal anyone? wink

Internal? But it's a shield...

What I made up above is a shield yep, but I want to make a smaller all in one at some point. I dunno about small enough for internal. That has been done before though so it's possible! I do want to shrink it down, or at least fit it in a standard hobbyist case.

As far as getting your hands on one, the board layouts are available here which is also where I will be putting up the build docs. Note that I haven't fixed the diode issue on the design currently on that page. I will (you'll know it's the right one when the silkscreen says ShieldBoy v1.01). I need to figure out the MIDI Out problem too so I will likely wait to post updated boards until I know what that problem is.

That said, I do have 2 spares. I may be using one for another ShieldBoy but I may have an extra. Not sure yet, but if you're interested, let me know and I can send it to you if I find I don't need it. You can also have it fabbed yourself. It was $30 to have it fabbed via DorkBot. That's $10 per board, so it won't break the bank if you want to have it made yourself.

Last edited by m00dawg (Mar 19, 2012 3:35 am)

Trash80
Offline
Los Angeles

Try swapping the lines on the midi out? Think thats a typo on my schematics. Shit is confuse to remember and get right.

m00dawg
Offline
Texas

As in MIDI 2 to 5V and MIDI 4 to pin 1 or just picking another digital in pin on the Arduino? Hoping it's the latter since that can be fixed in software wink

kitsch
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matt's mind

he means switching midi pins around, not on the uC

ashimoke
Offline
Czech republic
Apeshit wrote:

Internal? But it's a shield...

There are shields for arduino pro mini as well. I've actually been working on something like that (+ more) but I can't find the time to finally finish first working internal prototype hmm

m00dawg
Offline
Texas
kitsch wrote:

he means switching midi pins around, not on the uC

As in physically right? I did find this and it actually indicates that the pinout is correct if I am reading the top-left diagram correctly.

Last edited by m00dawg (Mar 19, 2012 12:24 pm)

Theta_Frost
Offline
Milwaukee, WI
Apeshit wrote:

Internal? But it's a shield...

Doh', correct!  I was thinking it was a combo with the arduino for a sec.  My bad!

juliflash
Offline
Malaga - Spain

Hi, I recently built your shiled, thanks in advance!! good clean work, and ver nice for sharing it smile

I wrote a post in this forum but nobody seems to answer, so I thought to ask "the creator" of the shieldboy instead wink

this is the post I wrote:

http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/7468/ … a-problem/

A picture of the interface:

http://s14.postimage.org/9as5ajhvl/PHOT … INOBOY.jpg

Basically I cannot comunicate with the GBA. I think should be something to do with the link cable when using the flash cart, as the interface is properly built... I´m using a cartridge M3 for Gameboy with a mini SD card, which allow to play ROMS and certain ebooks, videos, music, in the gambeboy advance.

Also using MEGA 2560, any ideas if I should adapt the Arduino sketch to load in MEGA?

Any help would be apreciated!! Thanks! and keep up the good work.
Julian

m00dawg
Offline
Texas

Doh sorry didn't see that original post, but I have responded to it with my thoughts. I think it might just be a simple case of needing to power the ArdunioBoy correctly (the 5V jumper is bridged and it shouldn't be as you have no 5V input coming from the GameLink cable).

m00dawg
Offline
Texas

Since some folks were starting to build this thing on their own, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and update the files and layout on our build page. I still haven't fixed the MIDI Out issue, but I'm actually thinking of doing away with that entirely when I build the all-in-one (or leave it as a pin-header) since I never use it and could save some space by not worrying about it.

I'd like to figure out why it doesn't work on the ShieldBoy at some point. It's not a huge priority but I do plan on figuring it out one of these days smile

thursdaycustoms
Offline
Cleveland, OH

Do you sell the pre-printed board or is my only option to print it myself? Do you sell it in a kit or anything? I really love what you have going on here but I honestly don't have the time to go and print a board. Building and assembling is no problem.

m00dawg
Offline
Texas

I use DorkBot for my printed boards. It is awesome in every way - generally inexpensive, fast (for crowd PCB fabbing anyway), easy to work with (just send in your Eagle Board file), you get boards in groups of 3, and they offer the boards in purple smile As I recall, having the ShieldBoy board fabbed cost about $30 (or $10 a board since they come in 3).

If there was enough interest, I wouldn't mind doing a medium scale run (about 25 boards). I'd prefer to either remove or fix that MIDI OUT though before I did that. And I still want to make an all in one design (where you just pop in the AVR chip from your Ardunio and you're off) if that's something you'd rather wait for.