Welcome to Mineduino! (limited edition). Not a shield and it deals the Arduino system inside! so you can create your own projects beside the Minestation.

7 Dec 2011 / 8 notes

The watcher files

We’ve never talked of what’s behind the tiny app that reads the data from Minecraft and sends to the Minestation. In the beginning we used the amazing library called libredstone from Aaron Griffith and we wrote a simple script in Ruby that deal with it plus the serial port and watchs if the level.dat has changed (thanks to Guard). We encountered a big problem: after 30 minutes, the guard library crashed and we had to move on another direction, drop ruby and start to play with Python only for one reason: to use the Watchdog library. As everyone can read at the end of the readme: Too many people tried to do the same thing and none did what I needed Python to do. We created another simple script similar to the first we wrote in Ruby: watcher.py.

After a while, Alfredo started to develop an alternative watcher-app in Java: Minestation-watcher. His approach is a bit different and more practical: instead of using a watcher library like watchdog, the code do the task of read and send the data every 100 milliseconds, whether the level.dat was modified or no. It’s a timer and functional solution.

On the other hand, Aaron just wrote a new Python script based in a Python binding of his library and also using the watchdog library, but this (the watchdog code) doesn’t work fine, neither on MacOSX or Windows. It’s really frustrating in the end.

Anyway, It’s sounds in the end a little weird if we think that a simple task of reading the contents of one file every time it changes doesn’t work well with any library we’ve tested. Meanwhile, we still use the timer solution…

6 Dec 2011

Expectations vs. Reality

For a while now, some Tumblr blogs have been posting some really funny stuff based on expectations vs. reality when trying to explain day to day or personal situations. However, the most interesting thing about these posts is the unique use of short frames, mere seconds, of scenes from movies, animations, cartoons or amateur recordings (known as animated gifs) instead of a written description or story. When the reader takes in these infinitely repetitive short stories, they immediately relate to what the author is trying to express. The dumb saying that a picture is worth more than a thousand words needs a technical review here; from now on many people will be able to say that an animated gif is worth more than a thousand pictures.

I spent a week mulling over writing a post on the first reactions to Minestation and I decided to make some final thoughts on the project. As I wasn’t too sure how to go about the post, in the end I decided to copy the expectations and reality structure as a starting point. To a certain extent, each time you present something which you have spent either a lot of or a little time working on, you have some expectations you would at least like to come true. The absurd and awful truth comes out when the distance between your expectations and reality is so long that you feel let down when you see the most bitter side of your personal miseries and frustrations. So, before the fiction of our expectations and reality don’t match up, let’s do this fun exercise on Minestation.

Expectations

Minestation is a project designed for two different types of audiences: Minecraft users and Arduino users. Minecraft players (a potential audience of about four million people) might be interested in the latest “gadget”. We thought that the idea of showing specific information about a virtual world as if it were really good and would attract the attention of Minecraft players, even if they were only interested in it out of a fetish for collecting stuff. On the other hand, developing Minestation as a “shield” of the star project of the open hardware, Arduino, was the right decision (and we keep on thinking so), even though we knew beforehand that the provisions of Arduino are somewhat limited (Arduino UNO). In any case, any intermediate or advanced UNO user could play and modify Minestation with no problems. Expectations? Appear on some of the most popular international websites which create a buzz about these types of projects: Make, Boing Boing, Adafruit or Hack a Day. Another expectation was to receive hundreds of petitions for Minestation which would lead to seriously thinking of distributing the motherboard.

Reality

Neither of the two expectations came true. The publication of the prototype has not been spread by any of the sites mentioned above nor have we had hundreds of demands for prototypes. Perhaps one thing would have led to another, but it’s also true that, for now, it’s a prototype that has to develop. However, the few public reactions have been highly positive. But Minestation presents an underlying problem. You need three things to try it successfully: a copy of Minecraft, an Arduino UNo and a Mac or a GNU/Linux, since the software which communicates Minestation with minecraft is still very precarious (it only works under commands). We have also noticed that, for now, Minestation is half way between two worlds, one of independent videogames and another of open software. The first world is less surprised by the project, but might interpret it as a “gadget” in an embryonic phase which is dependent on another device (not all Minecraft players are familiar with the Arduino project). The second world is interested in the possibilities of the “shield” for personal projects, which pretty much distorts the original idea of the project.

Another aspect to keep in mind is the sheer unlikelihood that other people will try Minestation. We could love to freely distribute it to any person interested in the project (and at no cost!), but this is not possible. Unlike software, access to open hardware is complicated for the majority of users and we must recognise that the Arduino project has paved the way. Even so, open hardware projects are still quite intimidating and require a minimum level of knowledge to be set up and function. For game addicts who are used to “click-and-play”, a project like Minestation would seem impossible when trying to make it work correctly.

It might seem defeatist. Quite the opposite. It’s important to take the first step and not forget that Minestation is a prototype. Let’s not forget that the start normally takes a long time yet has limited visibility. There’s still a lot of work to do to advance from version 0.1 to 0.2, which involves several areas of development (at the end of the day, we are not a business nor are we controlled by the rigid structure of an organisation):

Abandon the idea of “shield” and integrate Arduino to the same motherboard of Minestation. This step (which is already in a fairly advanced phase) would allow for the resolution of the problem of dependence on Arduino UNO. But we have also thought of the possibilities of Minestation being a general “gadget” instead of limiting it exclusively to a connection to Minecraft. We could suggest dividing the development of the project in two: on the one hand we would have the evolution of the motherboard as an agnostic device, we would call it “mineduino” and the motherboard “mineduino” for other projects and “Minestation” would be an illustrative example of the use of “mineduino” as a bridge between the physical reality and virtual worlds of videogames.
Simplify the graphic interface.
Completely redesign the management and communication application between Minestation and Minecraft and make it compatible with Windows.
Consider the use of a larger LCD in the future

Any suggestions in this connection are, of course, welcome

30 Nov 2011

Another pic!

13 Nov 2011 / 2 notes

Geeky specs

pcb

The Minestation is a standard Arduino shield. It has:

Nokia 6100 LCD color 132x132 16bit.
Booster step-up for the LCD.
74HCT245 as a voltage level adaptor 5V/3,3V.
Two push buttons for the Arduino external INT.

Booster

The Nokia 6100 LCD needs of a supply voltage for backlight leds around 7V. There’re several types of shields that raise the 5V of the Arduino’s power supply based on Motorola MC34063, but involving the use of 10 external components (or more) in addition to the chip itself.

Boost2

We found a simple solution using the Linear Technology’s LT3465AES in a encapsulated TSOP23-6 and using only four tiny components, without the needs of oversized tantalum capacitors:

Boost1

The result is a voltage around 6,8V-6,9V without loss on the inductor and better performance than MC34063.

Level adaptor

Another inconvenience that we solved was about the adaptation between the LCD level voltage (3.3V) and Arduino (5V). We used a 74HCT245 (it works really well at its inputs to 5V high while its powered by 3.3V). This eliminates the voltage divider networks using Zener diodes and resistors, making easier the assembling process.

Buttons

Finally, we added two push buttons to change the values of the contrast of the display because not every display shares the same amount of brightness with the same internal values of contrast.

These push buttons are wired to the Arduino D2 and D3. They’re the only external inputs that allows to be monitored by a required INT that avoids to enter in a crazy read loop caused by the push buttons (this means a constant that will reduce cycles of the already exhausted Arduino)