I'll try to reply to most of the pints in one post to prevent cluttering the thread up, but first of all - you are all a bunch of feature creeps! ;)
I did consider one large coil but couldn't see it being possible to provide even coverage and avoid hotspots or overdriving the displays if it wasn't fully loaded - it may be possible but I didn't explore that. Power efficiency, the loaded drivers deliver 70%+ of the input to the display, the figures only look bad as unloaded they still use quite a bit of power. Probably 10W could be saved by switching off the unused squares but it adds to the complexity and would prevent another idea I have from working. Any kit will be exactly that, you'll be thrown a bunch of machined paxolin discs and a roll of copper wire - reminds me of a clock case 'kit' I bought many years ago which consisted of some paper stencils and 2 sheets of plywood..... well it won't be that bad :). As for modifications that would turn it into an electronic chess game I've had the following ideas, along with a few hints offlist from Dekatron42: . The base coils are currently driven in rows of eight, they're also fed in rows of eight via 8x 2R2 fusible resistors. If I rearrange them to be supplied in rows and driven in columns this should work: The starting positions are known, or at least can be assumed. The controller will need to keep a map of the piece positions and track each movement. When a piece is picked up or put down there is a change in current through that row resistor, the controller can detect it then scan through the columns to find out which square has changed. As all the pieces are mapped it will know what was on that square and which squares will be valid for it to reappear on. When an increase is recorded across one of the resistors it can scan again to see which square is now occupied. If it detects it's on a valid square the game continues, if not it will stay in a loop waiting for a legal move to be made or end the game depending on programming. For the computer to make a move it will indicate it by only driving the coil under the piece to be moved and the destination square. As you know which moves are valid for that piece it will be easy to find that square and the piece will light up. Again if it's not moved to the correct square the controller can detect it and halt the game until it is. As all the pieces are mapped by the controller it doesn't need to identify them and swapping them for another piece or attempting to cheat will only halt the game or confuse the human player. To make this work I'll need to change the current row/row arrangement to row/column, add ADC lines from each resistor and add a 12v switch to each row of 8 coils. It'll need a larger microcontroller and a few spare pins will be needed to allow external programming. I really don't want to end up bogged down with more modifications though so if I do make these up as a kit I'd just supply the board with the above mods, basic always-on software and a means to program it externally. It's then up to the end user to do the rest. - and chess piece Nixie tubes would be just incredible expecially if they're made as plugin replacements. Tony. On Jun 22, 6:17 pm, jb-electronics <webmas...@jb-electronics.de> wrote: > Actually, I am just as well interested in the custom made chess Nixie > tubes, Ron ;-) > > Jens > > > > > > > > > Absolutely stunning! I be interested in a kit!!!! > > > Sent from my iPhone -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
