Grid with different placable parts connections

[Caio Petrelli]

So me and my friends came up with this idea of a board game which works along side your mobile, the game uses an electronic circuit with micro controllers and bluetooth for user input (board) and we have a set of parts that plug in to the holes of the board.

For the sake of simplicity I've made a sketch using a board of 10x4 and only 4 different parts
I've tough I could use RX and TX but I don't known any chip with that much I/O, I also find it very difficult to picture how the wiring will be done, maybe with flexible copper I don't know, but I can't see that being wired with standard wire when I get to the full sized version, probably 60x10 (Not sure), would be a mess.

here is the link to the sketch : **broken link removed**



each part needs to TRANSMIT ONLY these variables:

-Which part is it (ID)
-A Variable from 1 to 8 which indicates where the part is pointing to, its at the top of each part and it must be dynamic (can be changed and transmitted after the peace has been placed) Ill just use a 8-way switch for that...

I'm no engineer just an enthusiast, any ideas are welcome.

 

[barry]

Not quite sure what you've got there, but first of all, I think you're going to need a printed circuit board with some kind of sockets in it. If I understand correctly, you want to plug SOMETHING into one of 600 locations, and then configure that something with one of 8 conditions? That's a LOT of connectors, regardless of the rest of the functionality. This does not sound like an inexpensive idea.

 

[Caio Petrelli]

That's exactly what I meant, except about the connectors of that SOMETHING I thought I could use serial connections to the each of the 600 slots...

SOMETHING PIN OUT : (5+) (ground) (TX)
BOARD FEMALE IN : (5+) (ground) (RX)

so each slot operates separately...

How expensive are we talking about? Ive got a few people helping me... is there a chip that can handle that much I/O, a printed PCB seems like to way to go, I could use PCB with different layers, we've got access to a 3D printer so building custom sockets won't be a huge problem..

The problem really comes down to which chip we'll be using.. I'm quite new to electronics I can program in C but I'm a mess when it comes to parts..

 

[barry]

Finding a chip with enough I/O is the least of your problems. If you set you're devices up in a matrix, say, 20x30 you'll only need maybe 80 pins (+some overhead) to scan them. (I haven't really thought this through).

You're not going to be building any electrical sockets with a 3d printer, unless it can print metal.

How many of those SOMETHINGS are you going to have? Hopefully not 600, those don't grow on bushes. How big can they be?