Whew... It's been a while, hasn't it!
Don't worry, I never left this project alone - but taking breaks and getting a bit of variation in is healthy and fun, and I got to say, it was great working on the DSKorder and a small Hovercraft and stuff.
However, I've been idly collecting ideas, changes and improvements that I've been wanting to implement, and more importantly: I want to document the entire process, from soldering the hardware to setting up the Webserver.
It would be good practice for me, and helpful for anyone wanting to take inspiration or make their own sets.
So, what's planned for Revision 3.2:
There's a lot for sure, and I'll be chewing down on things over the next few months. In summary:
- The hardware will be polished. A few better support caps, charger IC, you name it. The MAX chip and a new I2C 6DOF gyro will now also be put on the board, and I'll optimize it for hot air flow resoldering~
- I'll also run a first larger batch of soldering. I intend to get at least four boards fully functional, which will finally allow me to try out proper games with friends!
- The software will get multiple new features! After cleaning up the current code and adding the IMU, I'm planning to rework the light control system to make custom light patterns easier to add. There's also going to be a new button to switch weapons on the fly, and a Filesystem based sound and weapon handler. This will give the server a lot more control by being able to upload new weapons on the fly, so... Wheee~
- The MQTT interface will be changed slightly, mainly to remove some load from the Lasertag sets themselves. Nothing major here ^^
- Speaking of the server, that thing will be polished a bit more too. After giving the Ruby backend a few small extra features to handle games smoother, I intend to add a SQL database to log events. That way, it's a bit easier to see what happened during a game, print statistics, that sort of stuff~
- Once all of this stuff is running smoothly, we'll get a Web interface! I've been playing with React, which is a fantastic backend for this sort of work. If everything goes well there will be a Player HUD, a big game statistics page to put on a screen or projector, and a game configuration window to mix and match game modules on the fly, set player teams, etc. This is definitely the most ambitious part, but it I get it right, it'll put this project into a truly professional grade of Lasertag system.
I'm really looking forward to this work, especially since I'll make sure it's well documented and reproducible for any guys here.
I'll also post updates on hardware and software here, so you can review it. The more eyes the better, since we all make small mistakes ^^'
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