04.11.2014 (Kittan)
I got a temporary workstation set up today and started tearing through screens. Everything will be running off a central 12V DC bus, so I had to either find screens that ran on 12VDC natively (which was, fortunately, fairly plentiful in my stash) or retrofit to work (only one required "the treatment"). Currently 12VDC is being provided by a Dell PE2950 server supply, which can push a little over 60A; I'm using an interface board Novak and I developed which breaks out the power to screw terminals and has a built-in 5VDC 2A buck supply. We'll probably use this in the final product, as it's also capable of turning on the server PSU from an external active-high signal so we can wire it off the computer's ATX, and all the LCDs will power on with the main machine. Should look pretty sweet. Tomorrow I'm gonna assemble the PC (we've only got 2 of the 3 necessary video cards so far though) and start stripping down screens for re-housing and rewiring power jacks.
Novak had a fairly entertaining couple of days, learning OpenGL basics so he can actually build the game side. It's interesting that we're doing a graphics-heavy software side since neither of us have ever programmed graphics before. But graphics is just the skin, the real fun is in the mechanics which should be fairly numerically intensive.