PXL game tiles

Intro

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The “2EAI-PEN-2324-Tiles” project is all about creating an exciting and interactive tile set. It consists of 36 tiles. This project blends technology and creativity to make gaming more fun and engaging.

Each tile consists of a pico, two pressure sensors, and rs485 communication. In the previous research project of this, the pico’s were programmed in rust, with rather pleasing results, with a few flaws. when this engineering project started, we decided, for best coarse of action to program them in python.

Code

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Here i will go over the code that runs on the pico’s as RS485 only specifies the the io and the differential signaling, the code for the project mainly consists of a protocol that has been especialy designed for the project.

it consists of a few lib files, that each contain classes.

RS485.py

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this contains two classes, one to store and use datapackets, the other to send and receive them

the datapacket class:

class datapacket:
    channel: int
    cmd: int
    message: list[int]
    def __init__(self, channel, cmd, message):
        self.channel = channel
        self.cmd = cmd
        self.message = message
    
    def to_bytes(self):
        return bytes([self.channel, self.cmd]) + bytes(self.message)

    def __str__(self):
         return str("ch: " + str(self.channel) + " cmd: " + str(self.cmd) + " msg: " + str(self.message))

and the RS485 class, that uses uart_TX and uart_RX to send the data on the bus. this only transmits datapacket and receives them. it does not have any logic. this class is used int tileclass to facilitate easier communication

Tile.py

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not really correctly named this one 🤦🏻‍♂️

This lib contains the way the protocol acts when receiving and transmitting datapacket’s it handles the addresses, it checks what type of command it is, and handles the commands This clas is the same wether it is a Slave tile or a Master tile. This also contains the TileArray class, this contains the way the tiles should act together. it contains the list of current in use addresses, and the position of each.

The protocol

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Command List

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Preserved Channels

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Demo’s

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these are some of the demonstrations we made

Communication Demo

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Here is a demonstration from early on in the project, this shows how the Tiles communicate via RS485.

3x2 Demo

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This is a demonstration from when the wooden array was fully done, and we could try a 3x2 demonstration