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2018 Hackaday Superconference Badge

Based on the Hackaday Conference in Belgrade, this badge will be a stand-alone, battery powered vintage computer packed with features

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Thinking back to the early personal computers, you started with an expensive processing unit and add an analog monitor (or even a TV set), cassette recorder, and a bulky keyboard... but with this badge everything fits in the palm of your hand. It includes a mini keyboard with mechanical buttons, TFT LCD color display, small speaker, flash memory for program storage and two AA batteries for tens of hours of operation.
New for the Supercon is a convenient proto-board which connects to your computer and lets you create your own expansion peripherals, including multiple shitty add-ons, standardized by Brian Benchoff.
Firmware is a masterpiece of Jaromir Sukuba, who will be among your hosts on the conference.

Get your ticket to the Hackaday Superconference! 

All ticketed attendees of the 2018 Hackaday Superconference will receive one of these incredible badges. We're excited to see what three days of badge hacking will produce! Join us in Pasadena on November 2-4!

Table of Contents:

An amazing badge for an amazing conference. The Hackaday Supercon hardware badge is itself a retro computer, running a BASIC interpreter, and emulating a Z80 computer with the CP/M operating system.

Study this project and get to work planning your badge hacks!

For a detailed BOM, please visit --Coming soon--

Badge firmware is licensed under MIT license, see github repository for more details.

supercon_bezel.cdr

Bezel which should be glued to the back of the bezel, to protect components from your fingers. The best material is transparent acrylic, 4 or 5 mm thick. This file is in CorelDraw Version 11, which is compatible with most laser cutters.

cdr - 23.89 kB - 11/07/2018 at 23:29

Download

Proto Board 2018 Outputs.zip

Gerber files and PCB file (CircuitStudio) for the proto PCB

x-zip-compressed - 1.33 MB - 10/23/2018 at 23:38

Download

Supercon 2018 Badge Outputs.zip

Gerber files and PCB file (CircuitStudio) for the main badge PCB

x-zip-compressed - 2.52 MB - 10/23/2018 at 23:38

Download

LIS3DH.pdf

LIS3DH accelerometer (16-bit reading)

Adobe Portable Document Format - 682.96 kB - 10/23/2018 at 22:59

Preview
Download

LIS3DE.pdf

LIS3DE accelerometer (8-bit reading)

Adobe Portable Document Format - 1.01 MB - 10/23/2018 at 22:59

Preview
Download

View all 10 files

  • Hackaday BASIC Interpreter

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:21 1 comment

    The Hackaday BASIC interpreter is based on the uBASIC project by Adam Dunkels. This provided a tokenizer and the most rudimentary words needed for the language to operate. From there, Jaromir Sukuba greatly expanded the word set to take advantage of the best the badge hardware has to offer.

    We are also testing out an advancement in the tokenizer written by @ziggurat29 which shows a speed-up of as much as 40x!

    The reference for all of the words is listed below. You may also see examples of these words in use by viewing the example code project log.

    Of Note:

    • Code in the program buffer can be viewed one page at a time by typing more. You can overwrite lines just by typing the line number at the prompt along with your new commands. It is recommended that you number every 10 lines or more so that you can add commands in between them as you develop your code.
    • The memclr word will clear the code currently in the program buffer.
    • Always save before running in case you have to reset the badge. save 0 will save to the first of 16 slots, load 0 will load the saved code.
    • Press the BRK key to break out of a running program
    • Typing a line number without anything after it will delete that line from your program
    • There are two print commands. print will not include a line feed, println will include a line feed

    BASIC Word List:

    Standard Words:

    • print
    • println
    • if
    • goto
    • gosub
    • return
    • for
    • next
    • end
    • let
    • rem

    Badge Custom Words

    • led X,Y - control LED, X[0..2] RGB, Y[0..1] on/off
    • tune A,B,C,D - plays tones A, B, C for duration D
    • clrscr - clear screen
    • setxy X,Y - set cursor at X,Y
    • wait X - wait for X ms
    • color X,Y - X=Foreground, Y=Background using EGA 16-color palette
    • chr X - prints character with ASCII representation X
    • termt X - sets VT100 terminal on or off (1-on, 0-off)
    • termup - forces screen refresh, if VT100 terminal is off
    • rnd X - function to return random number 0..X
    • ein X - function to return value of expansion pin X
    • eout X,Y - control expansion pin, X[0..3], Y[0..1] on/off  (pin 0 is labelled "G2", 1="G3", 2="B0",  3="B1")
    • edr X,Y - sets expansion pin function X[0..3], Y[0..1] output/input
    • uin X - function to return received byte from serial port, if X=0, function is non-blocking, if X=1, function is blocking
    • uout X - outputs value X to serial port as single byte
    • input "string" - prints string and returns user entered value
    • peek X - returns value from memory location X
    • poke X,Y - write value Y into memory, on location X
    • cursor X - turns cursor on (X=1) or off (X=0)
    • kin X - function to return byte from keyboard, if X=0, function is non-blocking, if X=1, function is blocking

    BASIC CLI commands

    • run - runs program
    • save X - Save program buffer to flash. There are 16 slots: X[0..15]
    • load X - Load program into buffer from flash. There are 16 slots: X[0..15]
    • list - list whole program
    • more - list program by pages
    • memclr - clears all code from the program buffer
    • free - prints amount of free program buffer
    • sload - load new program into buffer from serial port
    • ssave - output program buffer via serial port
    • help - short help

    Aliases

    In order to save you some typing, we defined some aliases for functions

    • print - pnt
    • println - ptl
    • clrscr - cls,clr
    • input - inp
    • setxy - sxy
    • return - ret
    • cursor - cur

    Gotchas

    There are a few gotchas that you may run into if really go wild with your BASIC program. Here's a few to keep in mind for those who care to read them:

    • There...
    Read more »

  • BASIC Program Examples

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:21 0 comments

    Print out all possible characters:

    10 for i=32 to 255
    20 chr i
    30 next i

    Bling the LEDs randomly (d is diode [0..2], s is state [0..1])

    10 d = rnd 2
    20 s = rnd 1
    30 led d,s
    40 print “Press BRK to return to BASIC prompt”
    50 wait 100
    60 goto 10

    Play random Major triads:

    10 let i = rnd 77
    20 if i<53 then goto 10
    30 tune i,i+4,i+7,400
    40 goto 10

    Scroll some text. The space before the text erases the previous character in that position:

    10 let i=0
    20 color 14,12
    30 clrscr
    40 setxy i,0
    50 print " Scroller"
    60 i=i+1
    70 wait 150
    80 if i<32 then goto 40
    90 color 15,0

    Bounce ball on screen. Shows:

    • Moving to different areas on screen.
    • Changing color.
    • Using delays and subroutines.
    • Turn off the blinking text cursor with cursor 0.
    • Manual screen refresh (termt 0 shuts off automatic scanning, termup triggers manual refresh) for a smoother animation than the scroll text example.
    5 termt 0
    7 cursor 0
    10 let x = 39
    20 let d = 0
    30 clrscr
    40 color 11,0
    50 setxy x,10
    60 chr 32
    70 if d = 1 then gosub 200
    80 if d = 0 then gosub 300
    90 chr 254
    95 termup
    100 if x = 0 then d = 1
    110 if x = 39 then d = 0
    120 wait 50
    130 goto 50
    200 x = x + 1
    210 return
    300 x = x - 1
    310 setxy x,10
    320 return

    Function to read byte from serial port and print it out

    10 println uin 0
    20 wait 500
    30 goto 10

    This one starts printing zero every 500ms, if there is any incoming byte from serial port, it gets written out.

    If you change uin parameter from 0 to 1, function gets blocking, ie. execution doesn't continue until serial byte is received. In that case, only when byte is received interpreter prints anything out.

    The same example can be used to read data from keyboard, the function used is called kin.

  • Music Syntax and Guide

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:21 0 comments

    This badge has a built-in speaker and you can compose music for 3 voices using a simple scripting language. Use the BASIC interpreter to access these features with the syntax: 

    tune voice1,voice2,voice3,duration

    Duration is the number of milliseconds this chord should be held. The voice values use Scientific Pitch Notation (https://hac.io/hGf7) where middle C is 60. Do a C major chord held for 1 second would look like this tune 60,64,67,1000 -- below is a cheat sheet.

    PRO TIP: Remember BASIC programs can be saved in any of 16 slots (0..15) using the save/load commands.

    As an example, try typing this into your BASIC interpreter (you may want to type memclr before you start, to clear any existing code):

    10 tune 0,0,72,131
    20 tune 0,0,74,131
    30 tune 0,0,77,131
    40 tune 0,0,74,131
    50 tune 70,74,81,262
    60 tune 0,0,0,131
    70 tune 70,74,81,393
    80 tune 60,76,79,524
    90 tune 0,0,0,131
    100 tune 0,0,72,131
    110 tune 0,0,74,131
    120 tune 0,0,77,131
    130 tune 0,0,74,131
    140 tune 69,72,79,262
    150 tune 0,0,0,131
    160 tune 69,72,79,393
    170 tune 62,69,77,393
    180 tune 62,69,76,131
    190 tune 62,69,74,655

  • Serial Communications with Badge

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:21 2 comments

    Badge to Badge

    Remember those TI graphic calculators that had a cable to transfer programs? The badges can work in the same way.

    • Connect the GND pins on the expansion header.
    • Connect C14<-->C13 and C13<-->C14 on the two badges.
    • On receiving badge type "sload" and it will wait for program to arrive
    • On sending badge type "ssave". Program will be sent. Receiving badge will report 1 byte more than sending badge to indicate the zero terminator
    • Type list on receiving badge to see new code in the program buffer.

             IMPORTANT TIP: If the receiving badge doesn't react, reset that badge (shift-reset) and try again.                                                   Sometimes this is necessary after first connecting the cables.

    Computer-to-Badge

    A serial-to-TTL cable will allow you to communicate between the badge and a computer. If you own one of this cables we highly recommend you bring it with you! We will have cables on hand but it will be necessary to share them so extras are great!

    Wiring Diagram:

    • Badge Pin Ground (GND) --> Ground on serial cable
    • Badge Pin TX (C14) --> RX on serial cable (White in this example)
    • Badge Pin RX (C13) --> TX on serial cable (Green in this example)
    • Important: Leave voltage disconnected (Red in this example)

    Serial Connection Info:

    • Baud: 19200 8N1
    • In basic, use command ssave to send program buffer as string
    • In BASIC, use command sload to recieve string into buffer
    • CP/M includes xmodem. Check your computer's serial program to ensure it supports this protocol. In the Z80 Emulator, switch to b: drive and run command similar to this: xmdm r d:FILENAME.EXT

    Linux: Simple Instructions for Transferring BASIC Programs

    This quick walkthrough assumes that USB to TTL serial cable will enumerate as /dev/ttyUSB0. Look at dmesg output after plugging cable to ensure this is true.

    Setup simple Linux serial connection:

    Use dmesg and look for where the serial cable is mounted -- this example assumes /dev/ttyUSB0. It then sets permissions to that mounting point, sets the serial parameters to a "sane" value, and configures the port as needed. When in doubt, power cycle your badge and try again.

    sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0
    stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 sane
    stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 19200 cs8 -cstopb -parenb -opost -inlcr
    stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0

    Send a File to Badge

    • On the badge, type sload into BASIC
    • On computer type: cat basic.txt > /dev/ttyUSB0
    • On the badge, press BRK

    Receive a File from Badge

    • On computer type: cat /dev/ttyUSB0 > newbasic.txt
    • On the badge, type ssave
    • On computer type CTRL-C

    MacOS X

    Be sure your adapter is properly installed and set up (may require downloading and installing driver) before using either of the two options below:...

    Read more »

  • Guide for Programming in C

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:21 6 comments

    Setting Up the Toolchain

    You will need a PIC programmer to write your own HEX files onto the badge. PICkit 3 and PICkit 4 have both been tested to work as programmers via the pin header on the badge.

    The BASIC badge is based around a PIC32MX370F512H. Software is compiled using MPLABX, XC32 compiler, and legacy peripheral libraries from Microchip.

    1. Download three packages:
      • Navigate to the Downloads" tab at the bottom of the Microchip Compilers page.
      • Download MPLAB® XC32/32++ Compiler v2.10 for your operating system
      • Download PIC32 Legacy Peripheral Libraries for your operating system
      • Navigate to the "Downloads" tab part way down the screen at the Microchip MPLAB X IDE page.
    2. Install the packages:
      • Install the XC32 compiler first
      • Install the peripheral libraries next. IMPORTANT: You must specify the same directory as the XC32 compiler. This will likely not be the default option during install. For Linux installation this director was: /opt/microchip/xc32/v2.10/
      • Install MPLABX IDE
    3. Open the MPLABX project from this repository
      • A PIC programmer like the PICKIT3 is required to program your badge
      • On the PIC programmer, pins 1-5 correspond to RES, V+, GND, B0, and B1 on the badge

    (If your programmer isn't recognized in Ubuntu 18.04 see troubleshooting below)

    Testing Your Toolchain Installation

    To test that the tools are properly installed before Supercon, clone the badge firmware repository on Github. Open the project, plug in your PICkit, and click "Make and Program Device"

    If all goes well, everything will work up to the point PICkit tries to communicate with a badge that's not there yet, at which time you'll see an error message like this:

    Target device was not found (could not detect target voltage VDD).
    You must connect to a target device to use PICkit 3.

    Congratulations! You are ready to hit the ground running. Once you pick up your badge and connect it to your PICkit, the firmware upload should succeed.

    User Examples for C Programming

    The stock firmware includes an example program that has both a menu entry, and many of the commands that will commonly be needed to write your own C code.

    • Selecting user program will run void user_program_init(void) first.
      • This is where you should do all of your program setup. This is a good function to call from your program when you want it to start over again.
    • After the init function is called, void user_program_loop(void) will be called
      • This is where the main functionality of your program should be stored.
      • If this function returns, it will immediately be called again.
    • millis() is a 32-bit upcounting millisecond timer. Non-blocking delays are a matter of setting a variable as millis()+1000 and then polling millis() until it is larger than this variable.

    Advanced

    • The screen defaults to scanning a 40x20 character array (screen will automatically update when array data changes). For direct control of the screen:
      • enable_display_scanning(0); //Turns off auto  screen scanning, value of 1 turns back on
      • view disp.h for screen manipulation functions to use in manual mode
    • When directly controlling the screen, you will want to perform a screen refresh after badge wakes up from sleep
      • There is function pointer in hw.h that will call your screen refresh function on wake. Here is the example for setting which function will be executed (do this in the initialization function of your program):
      • start_after_wake = &you_refresh_function;

    Troubleshooting

    Upon updating to Ubuntu 18.04 it seems that Microchip's...

    Read more »

  • Hardware Hacking

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:20 7 comments

    Front view of expansion Header:

    Here is a rear view diagram of the pin header taken from the badge schematic.

    These pins can be controlled from BASIC using the edir, ein, and eout commands. The UART on pins C13 and C14 can be accessed from BASIC using uin and uout commands. 

    G2 and G3 are 5V tolerant but all other pins should be interfaced at 3V.

    Important: there is no voltage regulation on the badge, and the PIC32 datasheet lists maximum Vdd of 3.6. Keep this in mind if upgrading power supply beyond a pair of AA batteries. (A fully charged lithium ion battery tops out at 4.2V.)

    Expansion Board

    New for the Hackaday Supercon is a hardware expansion board for prototyping your own circuits. Pictured here is the prototype. The final design will be black, and it will include three headers for #Shitty Add-Ons 

    To the right there will be a mounting hole so that the expansion board can be firmly affixed to your badge.

    Here is the front view (red) and rear view (green) of the circuitry for the expansion board. Here is the list of package footprints available:

    • 3 × Shitty Add-On headers
    • 1 × SO-8
    • 1 × SO-16
    • 1 × TSSOP-16
    • 2 × SOT-23 (for SMD transistors)
    • 14 × 0805 (for SMD passive components)
    • 1 × LGA-16 (for accelerometer only)

    All round pads are general purpose pads, and square ones are connected and intended for special use. The following drawing contains color marking for those pads, so the black pads are Ground (0V) connection, red pads are for +3V supply, green ones are I2C Clock pads, and blue ones are I2C Data pads. They are arranged so that you can use up to three shitty-add-on connectors without any modification of the PCB. 

    Pull-Up Resistor Footprints for I2C

    If you plan to use I2C (for your own circuit or for a shitty-add-on), pull-up resistors must be added. Please note that there are no pull-up resistors for the I2C bus on the main board, so you should add 4K7 (or similar) pull-up resistors on the noted 0805 footprints at the column "t", rows 4-5 and 6-7. Those 0805 footprints are marked as DA (data) and CK (clock).

    Adding an Accelerometer

    If you add an LIS3 accelerometer to your expansion board, it is highly recommended to add the ceramic capacitor at the column "q", rows 4-5. Its capacitance should be 4.7 to (preferably) 10 µF.

    Pin 1 of the accelerometer is at the bottom left. Only LIS3DH or LIS3DE accelerometers can be used, as the pads on the LGA-16 footprint are connected to required sources. Please note that LIS3DH and LIS3DE have the same pinout diagram, but they are many internal differences, including register and slave addresses. For instance, LIS3DH has 16-bit output reading for each axis, and LIS3DE has 8-bit outputs.

    Other Footprints on the Expansion Board

    There are 18 large square pads at the bottom layer of the PCB. All those pads are general purpose and are convenient for attaching large components or thick conductors.

    Leftmost and rightmost columns "A" and "v" can be used for SIL connectors. Holes on these pads are with 1mm diameter, so they can accept normal male pins of SIL headers.

  • CP/M on Badge, Quick Guide

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:20 12 comments

    After you start Z80 emulator with CP/M, the machine boots up on A drive greeting you by prompt

    A>

    There is not much to do with this drive, as it is 22kB RAM disk. It is empty after boot, as you can try with command

    dir

    that prints what is in current directory. You can switch to disk B, where is more to be found

    b:

    and system will respond with

    B>

    meaning you are there. You can now list content of this directory again and discover a few executable (.COM) files, like XMDM, MBASIC or FORTH. You can play around with those; notice that some of them expect different line (CR) end than what badge uses (LF). You can do CR line end by hitting SHIFT+ENTER. Exit MBASIC by typing system<CR>.

    On disk C you have some more goodies, namely famous ZORK game and SARGON chess game.

    Disk D is empty, with 512kB of capacity. You can copy files to/from disks utilizing PIP program, with syntax of

    pip d:=c:zork1.com

    that will copy file zork1.com to drive d. Notice you should run this one from disk B, where pip resides, or explicitly set path to pip program.

    If you want to erase the file, just type

    era d:zork1.com

    If you happen to need to list ASCII file, invoke command

    type file.txt

    or dump binary file in hexa form by running

    dump file.bin

    Stat command is used to display statistics of a file or drive; you can run

    b:stat

    to display info of drives or

    b:stat *.*

    to display information about all files on particular drive. Notice the wildcards - you can use it when copying or erasing the files too.

    If you want to transfer files from computer (or perhaps another badge), you may use XMODEM program. Run

    b:xmdm r d:filename

    to start saving received file on D drive, and start XMODEM transfer on other side. The transfer speed is 19200 baud. You may try to archive files into ARC format and un-arc it on CP/M side with dedicated software, if you want to transfer more files. On linux, you may want to use sx to transfer files, or moserial or cutecom for GUI access, with windows, teraterm is good option.

    You may want to try assembler toolchain consisting of ED editor, ASM assembler, LOAD program to convert hex to .COM file and DDT debugger. There is quite a lot of Z80 CP/M software on the interwebs, you may want to look for "walnut creek CP/M CD". Be prepared that a lot of CP/M software was designed for modified machines, sidetracking BIOS, so it may not run on this particular machine.

    Notice badge has option to switch from local standard input/output (keyboard/display) to serial port (on pins C13 and C14 on expansion port, 3,3V levels, don't forget ground) by pressing LSHIFT+RSHIFT+BRK; with the same combination taking you back to local access. You may access the command line using terminal emulator on your PC, gaining somehow more comfortable access.

    You can find more details about the CP/M commands and programs here and here.

  • Tutorial for Programming in C

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:19 3 comments

    Use your badge as a flashlight with 'lumos'

    This tutorial walks through the following:

    • Find out how to do something on the badge, by looking at implementation details of a related existing BASIC command.
    • Look at three ways to trigger the new code:
      1. Add it as a program to be launched at main menu command line.
      2. Add it as a new BASIC command.
      3. Add it to the default user program.

    One of the first things we do with the badge is to light up its LED using BASIC commands. For this tutorial, we want to light up all three LEDs to use the badge as a flashlight. We can do this with the following simple BASIC program:

    10 led 0,1 20 led 1,1 30 led 2,1

    This works, but it's silly to take up a BASIC program slot just for this. So in order to add this feature to badge firmware, we start by looking at what happens under the hood when BASIC sees the "led" keyword.

    • basic/tokenizer.h:
      • Declare enum TOKENIZER_LED.
    • basic/tokenizer.c:
      • Static array keywords[] associates command string 'led' with TOKENIZER_LED.
    • basic/ubasic.c:
      • Inside function statement() a TOKENIZER_LED triggers a call to led_statement()
      • led_statement() processes the tokens and calls into set_led()
    • hw.c:
      • set_led() sets the PIC32 pins corresponding to LEDs.

    Copying from set_led(), we can write a short function to turn on all three at once:

    void flashlight() { LED_R = 1; LED_G = 1; LED_B = 1; }

    Side note: this is equivalent to calling an existing function set_led_word(0x07), but for the sake of the tutorial we'll proceed with adding a new function.

    Now we'll survey the options for putting our new function to work, you can use any combination of the below as you see fit for your code:

    Option 1: add to main menu:

    To light up LEDs when user enters a command in the main menu, we edit badge_menu() in badge.c. After the user presses enter (NEWLINE), there's an if/else tree to process commands. We can add a new menu command to this list. We'll make our new command "lumos".

    [...existing code...] else if (strcmp(menu_buff,"lumos")==0) { flashlight(); } [...existing code...]

    Now we can type "lumos" at the main menu to turn on flashlight mode.

    Option 2: add to BASIC commands

    (UPDATE: The Superconference badge firmware now has a much faster BASIC tokenizer, an upgrade over the Belgrade badge. The downside is that it's more difficult to modify. The instruction below applies to the slower but easier to modify BASIC tokenizer.)

    This retraces our steps digging into BASIC commands, this time adding our own code.

    • basic/tokenizer.h: 
      • Declare enum TOKENIZER_LUMOS.
    • basic/tokenizer.c:
      • Add to keywords[] array to associate string "lumos" with TOKENIZER_LUMOS.
    • basic/ubasic.c: 
      • Add to the switch statement inside statement(), so a TOKENIZER_LUMOS will call  lumos_statement()
      • Add new function lumos_statement() to process tokens and call flashlight().

    Now "lumos" will work as a badge BASIC keyword

    10 lumos

    Option 3: add to user program:

    The default user program waits for a user key press. Add a call to flashlight() just after a key is detected in user_program_loop() of user_program.c.

    [...] if (get_stat!=0) { flashlight(); /* Turn on all three LEDs */ /* Show which letter was pressed just as an example: */ [...]

    With this change, the LEDs will light up on the first key press after the user program starts.

    But the user program is your playground to do as you please,...

    Read more »

  • C Programming HOWTO Reference

    Mike Szczys10/16/2018 at 16:19 0 comments

    This section is a concise reference guide for Superconference hackers short on time. It will continue growing through Supercon weekend to be a programming FAQ as needed.

    HOWTO: Get an overview of badge code

    • main.c: Most of this file is a large comment block describing overall project layout.

    HOWTO: Free up memory to make room for big projects.

    • badge_settings.h
      • Data memory: USE_RAM_IMAGE_NEW and USE_RAMDISK
      • Program memory: USE_ROMDISK and USE_ROMDISK2
    • Frees up memory at the cost of degrading/disabling badge's Z80 emulator running CP/M.

    HOWTO: Upload new badge firmware faster.

    • Free up program memory, see above. Smaller program memory means less data to transfer to the badge on every firmware upload.

    HOWTO: Manage memory at runtime.

    • The default badge firmware uses only compile-time memory allocation. (There is no call to malloc()) This avoids memory leaks, heap fragmentation, etc.
    • The following blocks of memory, allocated at compile time, may be available.
      • ram[]: 64 kb available when not running Z80 emulator. See splash.c for an example of how to use it.
        • Advanced challenge: code injection into Z80 emulator memory using ram[].
      • flash_buff[]: Available when not interacting with flash storage
      • bprog[]: Available when not running BASIC
      • disp_buffer[]  color_buffer[]: Available if not printing text on screen

    HOWTO: Draw a bitmap to screen.

    1. tft_set_write_area(x,y,width,height); //Set the drawing area
      1. IMPORTANT: Drawing area is INCLUSIVE. This means to draw the entire screen width of 320 pixels, "x" would be zero, and "width" is 319. NOT 320.
    2. TFT_24_7789_Write_Command(0x2C); // Begin bitmap data transfer.
    3. TFT_24_7789_Write_Data3(red, green, blue); // RGB value for one pixel, repeat until drawing area is filled.

    Example 1: disp.c: void tft_fill_area() fills an area with a single color.

    Example 2: nyancat.c: nyancat() renders animation frame line-by-line.

    HOWTO: Stop automatic redraw of text buffer on screen.

    • enable_display_scanning(0);

    HOWTO: Read/write nonvolatile (flash) memory.

    • hwz.c: fl_read_4k(), fl_erase_4k(), fl_write_4k()
    • badge_settings.h has a comment block laying out how flash memory is organized.
    • Example usage in badge.c: basic_load_program() and basic_save_program()

    HOWTO: Generate sounds which aren't musical notes.

    • hw.c: sound_set_generator()

    HOWTO: Read keyboard directly.

    • hw.c: keyb_tasks()
    • stdio_get() can get confused when multiple keys are pressed simultaneously so certain key combinations require direct reading. (Example: a game that needs to know a user pressed "Up" and "Right" simultaneously for a diagonal move.) 

    HOWTO: See under the hood of a BASIC command.

    • basic/ubasic.c: static void statement(void)
    • When the BASIC interpreter sees a recognized command (in the form of a token) statement() will call a corresponding C function to do the actual work.

    HOWTO: Add a new BASIC command.

    • tokenizer_generate/ubasic.re
    • This is the input file for re2c to generate a new high speed BASIC tokenizer.

    HOWTO: I2C

    (Added in version 1.21)

    • hw.c: iic_init(), iic_start(), etc
    • user_program_temp.c is not part of the badge firmware build, but serves as sample program demonstrating interaction with Si7020 temperature sensor over I2C.

    HOWTO: PWM

    • Easy way: Take over one of the three audio voice timers (Timer2/3/4) and, instead of always inverting one of the audio generator pins, count duty cycle and output to one of the expansion port pins accordingly.
      • hw.c: Timer2Handler(), etc.
    • Proper way: Use the PIC32 Output Compare peripheral to do basically the same thing, but using high performance dedicated hardware.

    HOWTO: Solve...

    Read more »

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James Newton wrote 11/07/2022 at 19:00 point

Huh... Apparently I didn't add this link here... thought I had. 
The FORTH provided on the CPM B drive is apparently Fig FORTH 1.1g. But the screen files are missing so you can't edit anything. I've found them and host them here along with a translation of the manual from the original Hungarian. I'm happy to add the files here or where ever so they aren't lost (again) when my site goes down.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/language/FORTH/z80fig-Forth1_1g.htm

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asorc wrote 02/15/2019 at 15:29 point

Is it going to be some kit that we can buy to build It? Or pcb's maybe? With the sketches to upload to the mcu ourselves. I am interested.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 02/16/2019 at 00:43 point

I don't think that there will be. There are so many new projects to build, and so few time...

  Are you sure? yes | no

iRonBlock wrote 12/01/2018 at 19:03 point

It would be great to shove it into the Nokia E63 case (they cost only $ 5), there are buttons from the phones, they are smaller.

  Are you sure? yes | no

davedarko wrote 12/01/2018 at 22:33 point

sounds like a great idea, good luck and please share it here!

  Are you sure? yes | no

iRonBlock wrote 12/04/2018 at 21:54 point

I don’t do this project, I don’t know how to make boards, and it’s impossible to do well without boards.

  Are you sure? yes | no

davedarko wrote 12/04/2018 at 23:02 point

ahh too bad, I meant here as in a project on hackaday.io 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Hpag wrote 02/15/2019 at 18:41 point

i have this idea in my mind about years, but with raspberry pi. I will start working as soon as i have free time to do :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

iRonBlock wrote 02/18/2019 at 13:30 point

It would be great. On the Raspberry Pi Zero? There are ILI9341 - 2.8 inch display, it should fit perfectly.

Really looking forward to your project. It will be possible to make a cool powerful portable device, in a cool case.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Hpag wrote 02/18/2019 at 19:21 point

Sadly, the screen of e71 and e63 is 3.36". I found some on aliexpress but when i asked them for datasheet they said they dont have the product and datasheet anymore. So i stuck a bit about that project. But Nokia Asha 210 and nokia C3 have 3.4" display so i can look forward to that design. Also reverse engineering the keyboard and writing a driver is the hardest part after the LCD

  Are you sure? yes | no

Elliot Williams wrote 11/06/2018 at 15:05 point

Where should we post our code?  How do we link it here?

  Are you sure? yes | no

davedarko wrote 11/06/2018 at 22:30 point

github? gists?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Roger wrote 11/07/2018 at 02:44 point

Yes, please share all your badge hacks!

Add topic "Supercon" to Github projects (https://github.com/topics/supercon)

Add tag "Supercon" to Hackaday.io projects (https://hackaday.io/projects?tag=SuperCon&sort=date)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kojoe wrote 10/31/2018 at 19:27 point

Can't be there but it won't stop me from trying to contribute

I made 2 game in Basic but, not having a badge, I can't try it out nor debug it.

If someone could point me towards a working Basic program in a *.txt file, it would answer my first few question.

The games are:

single player: Catapult and Castle (crush the castle type of game)

Dual player: Car Drag Racing

  Are you sure? yes | no

Roger wrote 11/01/2018 at 10:00 point

One of the project logs here is a list of "BASIC Program Examples" to help answer your first few questions.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kojoe wrote 11/01/2018 at 12:48 point

I've seen them and it still doesn't explain how the numbering in front of the instruction work. According to the NOTE "It is recommend that you number every 10 lines or more so that you can add commands in between them as you develop your code." 

So is there a maximum?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kojoe wrote 11/01/2018 at 14:47 point

I have created a project so you can try the games. As I don't have the badge to test them, the contribution of the community is required to help me fix bugs and more.

https://hackaday.io/project/162149-ubasic-game-for-superconference-badge

  Are you sure? yes | no

T. B. Trzepacz wrote 10/30/2018 at 16:08 point

I made a project for the enclosure. STL files for 3d printing are there.
https://hackaday.io/project/162134-hackaday-superconference-2018-badge-enclosure

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 10/30/2018 at 16:39 point

Hey, great enclosure, Tim!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Rob Carnegie wrote 10/29/2018 at 00:51 point

I don't see any discussion of the types of variables supported by the BASIC interpreter.  Does it support arrays?

Also I don't see any mention of  facilities for reading or writing data to/from a text file.  I could do my project by poking data into memory but normally there is a facility for protecting areas of memory from BASIC overwrite.

Does the CP/M environment support/include a more full featured version of BASIC?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kojoe wrote 10/31/2018 at 19:54 point

According to uBASIC, the only variables supported are integer

"There is only support for integer variables and the variables can only have single character names." Source: https://github.com/adamdunkels/ubasic

  Are you sure? yes | no

SHAOS wrote 10/22/2018 at 23:13 point

If I understand correctly, PICKIT3 is the only way to re-flash the badge? Do you guys know easy way to use PICKIT3 from Linux? Last time when I checked (couple years ago?) it was NOT possible. Something changed recently?...

  Are you sure? yes | no

SHAOS wrote 10/22/2018 at 23:17 point

I can explain - I will bring my Linux laptop to superconference with IDE as 2 years ago, but in that time (2016) it was much easier because you simply connected badge to the computer through USB and it was opened in Linux as USB storage where you can put HEX-file as a file.

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Voja Antonic wrote 10/22/2018 at 23:23 point

Sorry, there is no such option this time

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 10/22/2018 at 23:22 point

I guess that you need MPLABX IDE, which is available at https://www.microchip.com/mplab/mplab-x-id, it has options for Windows, Linux and Mac.

  Are you sure? yes | no

SHAOS wrote 10/23/2018 at 00:00 point

I have it, but PICKIT3 didn't work for me in Linux version of this IDE

UPDATE: In the latest MPLAB.X IDE I was able to use PICKit3 from Linux!!! :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Roger wrote 10/23/2018 at 06:41 point

My Dell laptop running Ubuntu 16.04 can use my PICkit 3 without problems.

  Are you sure? yes | no

jaromir.sukuba wrote 10/23/2018 at 17:57 point

Firmware development of the badge is done on Linux machines - both @Mike Szczys  and me are Linux guys.

There are multiple ways of getting the firmware to badge, all of them are expecting ICSP access (no bootloaders for now), but you nee some kind of ICSP programmer. For example, you can use arduino as slow but workable programmer - as in https://hackaday.io/project/27250-mcu-how-tos-reviews-rants/log/148016-programming-pic32-with-arduino - or you can use pic32prog with PicKit2, if you happen to have some (cheap ebay knockoffs do generally work).

The "big boys" way is using MPLAB IDE (or just IPE - that is just programming interface). I'm working with MPLABX on Linux for 6 years or so.

  Are you sure? yes | no

SHAOS wrote 10/23/2018 at 18:43 point

Yes, latest MPLAB.X IDE is working fine with PICKIT3 in 64-bit Debian.

I'm working with MPLAB X on Linux (from time to time) since their beta stage (2009?), but when I switched from 32-bit Slackware to 64-bit Debian I lost ability to use USB to flash PICs (until now).

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jeroen wrote 10/22/2018 at 11:57 point

I know it can do much more but for me it looks like an awesome as a little VT100 terminal for my (mobile) Arduino projects. I'm currently working on a LoRa based BBS/chatroom, this could make my perfect vt100 terminal. Shouldn't be too hard to implement basic VT100 in basic.

Shame I missed Belgrade...

https://github.com/rusty71/loracommander/ 

https://vimeo.com/293320164

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bosko wrote 10/21/2018 at 19:36 point

@Voja Antonic  @jaromir.sukuba  Will be Belgrade Badge compatible with Super Con Badge ? Example code for SuperCon to install on BelgradeBadge..

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 10/22/2018 at 01:29 point

It's a good question. The hardware schematics is the same, but there will be many firmware updates and modifications. So yes, you can reflash the whole program memory and use the Belgrade badge with a new firmware (but I am not sure about the new BASIC programs on the old firmware). The only different component is the external FLASH memory, but it should be compatible with the old one.

  Are you sure? yes | no

jaromir.sukuba wrote 10/23/2018 at 18:02 point

Unfortunately the FLASH memories aren't the same and there are tiny details between them that make it incompatible.

As worst case solution I'm planning to backport the changes from SuperCon badge to Belgrade firmware, or better adding some conditional compilation (so that codebase for SuperCon will work for Belgrade badge) or even better making the FLASH detection automatic.

We are busy now with SuperCon, so this can happen after it's over.

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Marcel van Kervinck wrote 10/19/2018 at 18:57 point

I just realise this could work as a Gigatron keyboard if the BASIC is fast enough.

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EK wrote 10/18/2018 at 03:07 point

Hello! This looks like a lot of fun and can't wait to try to control the robot with it! 

Can you verify if the serial logic level is 3.3V or 5V?
Also can you release the source for the hardware expansion board? (Hoping it is Eagle) - Thanks a bunch!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 10/18/2018 at 04:45 point

Thanks, Erin!

The unit is supplied from two AA batteries, so the logic level depends on the battery voltage. But I am sure that it will be compatible with 3.3 V logic.

PCB files will be uploaded soon. Unfortunately, not in Eagle, but in Circuit Studio.

  Are you sure? yes | no

EK wrote 10/18/2018 at 18:19 point

Ah yes - thank you for pointing this out. We might want to have a usb battery with a voltage regulator then!
Hmm. In lieu of Eagle, would you be able to make a quick sketch by hand that shows the dimension and angle of the header connector? That's the tricky part :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Nyles wrote 10/25/2018 at 18:01 point

Cool - any chance for a pdf of the schematic?

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T. B. Trzepacz wrote 10/18/2018 at 02:10 point

I was considering making a nice 3d printed enclosure for it. If the files are in KiCAD or Eagle I can export a 3d model of the board to model around. Are those things available somewhere?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Voja Antonic wrote 10/18/2018 at 04:50 point

Files are in Circuit Studio, which has very poor export possibilities. I usually build the Gerber file, and then export it to some other format. Unfortunately, my Gerber Viewer has no vectored export, but only several bitmap formats. I am just searching for some Gerber viewer which can export standard vectors (DWG, DXF or so).

  Are you sure? yes | no

T. B. Trzepacz wrote 10/18/2018 at 06:59 point

I looked up the Belgrade Superconference badge gerbers (is it the same?) and managed to import those into KiCAD through it's GerbView utility, although it seems to have vastly enlarged pads on all of the vias for some reason.

I can export that as a STEP file that Autodesk Fusion 360 can work with, but that doesn't give me the heights of any of the components used on the board.

This leaves me with either a lot of guesswork, or else I have to repopulate the board in KiCAD to get accurate outlines. I don't know if I really have time for either of those, but I'd like to try to get something done.

If I can get an accurate picture of the front (maybe scan it in a flatbed scanner?) and maybe a few caliper heights for the components, I can give it a shot. The most important thing is to get the buttons right, because otherwise the keyboard will be unusable.

Of course, I could do much better if I could get my hands on a badge in advance of the event. This kinda stuff needs to be done before the event and not at it because the 3d printer job will take at least 24 hours to run. I could do acrylic more quickly, but I don't know if they will let me in the laser cutter room during the event... it's kinda noisy and smelly, which isn't good when they are having sessions right next to it...

  Are you sure? yes | no

T. B. Trzepacz wrote 10/18/2018 at 15:24 point

I found the Gerbers for the previous Hackaday Belgrade badge, and after a lot of work I made a 3d model from them. I put it in the public chat for this project. I'll see if I can come up with an enclosure on Friday.

  Are you sure? yes | no

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