Gameduino2 - This thing is AMAZING, but.....

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nealbert
 
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Gameduino2 - This thing is AMAZING, but.....

Post by nealbert »

I just got my Gameduino2 and have been playing with it for about 30 minutes. Long enough to find a few issues.

The first thing you might encounter is the touch panel only functions in the lower, right hand quadrant of the screen. Also, moving your finger up and down causes the cursor (or dots or line or whatever your drawing) to draw horizontally or at some weird angle NOT in line with your finger movement. SOLUTION : Calibrate your touch screen. Instruction to do this are here... http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino2/faq.html#gd2faq . According to excamera.com "The first time the Gameduino 2 boots, it calibrates the touchscreen - asking you to “please tap on the dot” in three places on the screen. It then stores this calibration in Arduino EEPROM." Mine didn't and your's might not either.

Unfortunately, I can't calibrate the touch screen because the sketch "selftest" tests everything on the Gameduino2 before it gets to the touchscreen calibration. Hence, Issue #2..... it consistently fails the SDcard test. I have known good, Windows formatted (FAT32) micro SD cards and they ALL fail. The cards I have tried are:
128mB SanDisk microSD
2GB SanDisk micro SD
4GB SanDisc micro SDHC
8 GB Kingston micro SCHC, class 10
Is there a certain Brand, size or speed of SD card that is recommended? that works?
SOLUTION (really a work around) in the sketch "selftest" ,comment out Line 442 - - - // SCREENTEST(SDcard);
You can now run "selftest" and it will skip over the CDcard check.

But, if your Gameduino2 is like mine it also fails the Audio Test. Dang! Better go back into sketch "selftest" and comment out line 447 - - - //A SCREENTEST(audio);

Great, now you can finally run "selftest" uninterupted, it will get to the touch screen calibration and you can finally fix the first issue above. Whew.

So my question is...is my Gameduino2 broken? It fails SDcard and audio self tests. But, running sketch "viewer" I can see a long list of jpeg files that are on the SDcard. I can select one and i even get a progress bar as the file attempts to load. But it never loads ( I'll see black, white or random noise on the sceeen).

I can load the sketchs "frogger" or "simon" and they sound like the original games. So the audio works in a sketches, but not in self test. Guess it's time to look at the code in the "selftest" sketch.

Anyone at Adafruit or in the community having these kind of issues? How can I know if my Gameduino2 is broken if the self test sketch is buggy?

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Gameduino2 - This thing is AMAZING, but.....

Post by adafruit2 »

Not sure, sounds like there's some software/sketch issues - we've contacted the manufacturer (excamera.com) to respond here :)

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James_Bowman
 
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Re: Gameduino2 - This thing is AMAZING, but.....

Post by James_Bowman »

Hmm, sounds like something is wrong at the software level with the SDcard reading. There is a huge variety of SDcards, and some don't play nicely in SPI mode. The fact that the 'viewer' app can actually fetch a directory off the card suggests that the physical connection to SD is good - some software glitch is stopping it from working properly.

Just checking a couple of things... - you did copy the standard file set onto the formatted SDCard? http://excamera.com/files/Gameduino2sd.zip
And did you try the 2GB card formatted to FAT16?

If you are in the US, maybe the easiest way is for us to trade SD cards. Let me know and I'll swap you a 4GB known-good card for your failing 4GB. [email protected]

J.

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nealbert
 
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Re: Gameduino2 - This thing is AMAZING, but.....

Post by nealbert »

James, I guess I got in a hurry and missed the instructions about installing the excamera files to the SD card. Per your instructions above, I formatted the 2 GB card to FAT 16 and copied the required files to the card. Now everything works fine......almost.
It still fails the audio test in "selftest". Not a big deal because the audio really does work in the games. Even in "selftest". I hear beeps every time I touch a dot. Looks like you may have to tweak the "selftest" code.

Anyway, thanks for the help. Looking forward to developing some apps for the Gameduino2.

Neal Cooper

PS : In the next spin of the board, can you move the audio connector as close to the edge of the board as you can get it (away from the Arduino USB conn). An iPhone/iPod earbud will plug in, but other headphone jacks interfere with the USB connector. Thanks.

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