Video ;)

Finally, here we are with a video that we have created to explain you how our project works. We hope all of you enjoy it!

Posters

The day of the presentation has arrived and we have been designing some posters to catch our audience.
I hope you like them and enjoy our Show & Tell & Test.

Games

In our aim to play more with the technology we have created 2 games instead of only 1 game. Considering that only one game all the time could result little bit boring, we came up with the idea of coding another game with the same concept.

We have introduced a new Sun SPOT which acts as a master. The master can change from Game 1 to Game 2 and send this information to all the players broadcasting the message.

Each player needs two things for playing this game:

• Wristband to put in the arm (which contains a Sun SPOT)
• Element to transmit the light
• Glove
• Sword
• Wand

Game 1:

Each player starts with a different color. The goal is to transfer your color to all the players. Once a player transmits his color to another player they become part of the same team and they have to transmit it to the others.

No one can save you from others, so you need to be more agile and faster than your opponents.

Game 2:

This second game is the classical Tag game. All players but one will start with the green light. The other player will start with the red light. Run far away from the red light player, he/she will try to exchange lights to become free. If you get the red light, you need to get rid off it!!

Whenever you need to restart the game or change the game, use the master Sun SPOT.

• Left Switch: used to transmit the game
• Right Switch: used to change the game
• Green Light: Game 1
• Red Light: Game 2

How to switch games?

First, use the Right Switch to select your desire game.

Second, transmit the previous information to every player clicking the Left Switch.

Coming soon with more news ;)

(Posted by Germán and Víctor)

RFID ready

After agreeing on a main design of the system we started integrating the RFID reader to the Sun-Spot.

The first task was to get some readers.

3 breakouts
1 RFID Reader ID-20LA
1 RFID Reader ID-12LA
5 tags
1 RFID Reader / Writer

We decided to start with the ID-12 RFID reader because it was the smallest.

In order to connect the SunSpot with the RFID reader we needed a breakout, a little board that will bring the 2mm spaced pins out to two 0.1" spaced headers. 

The connections are visible with a thin line, that should be checked after the soldering

None of us had any experience soldering so we start practicing with a breakout and some cables, after gaining some confidence we start with the ID-12 reader.

In our first attempt to make the RFIDs work with the Sun Spot we found that it is essential to solder the breakout to the RFID. We found that it was impossible to make tries because the connection was really really poor.

This was our first time, for all the members, trying to solder this kind of components. We found really useful to use a voltmeter to check that all our solder points were correct and current was going well from point to point. We also found really useful to picture in our minds how it should look like after soldering. Therefore, we recommend you to take a look at this website.

After that we obtained this

Once done the soldering process, we made some tests with this code that we found online done by someone who faced this same problem before.

Surprise! It wasn't working really well and at some point it stopped working. So started crashing our heads against the wall. The code seemed to work and we checked that current was passing through perfectly before testing it with the code.

Oh! We found out that our soldering points weren't good enough, and in the pin we were using to transmit the info from the RFID to the Sun Spot the connection was weak. We fixed and checked all the soldering points.

Yuhuuu! It was working properly.

A test confirming that everything was working

See you in the next post.
Víctor & Germán