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Hey folks. I was playing with electronics over christmas and thought I would post about my attempt to make physical controls for iphone.
I bought a "basic stamp 2" chip that is programmed with basic and is super easy to use (but expensive if I blue smoke it). The cool thing is it does serial IO. So does the iphone but I had to jailbreak it as apple requires you join a club to use it officially. So I got a blackberry trackball and a psp nub and some momentary buttons wired up to the iphone from my test bed and sent their position signals which was cool. I wanted two nubs but I wrecked one by overheating it with the crappy cheepo soldering iron I got. I bought some iphone cases out of which I am creating the final housing which I think will be quite neat.
I am just waiting for a part I need to arrive in the mail so I can power it from the iphone itself and do away with the rig to complete the project. I will post some videos of it all working.
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Awesome stuff David Da Vinci
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Looking forward to it – nice work indeed :)
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Putting the trackball and buttons on the back is a clever use of space, very nice. There’s loads of iPhone games that are crying out for a good physical controller like this, on screen joysticks are a pile of honk.
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Great stuff! Where do I buy one? :wink:
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Thanks for the support guys.
Great stuff! Where do I buy one? Wink[/quote:055c05c0de]
I think it would be cool to be involved in putting something like this into production as could be made quite cheaply with a healthy margin but I don’t have contacts for that. (There are people doing something similar but have been at it for ages). -
Nice work. Parallax make some great products.
If you use the FTDI chips for the serial to USB conversion you’ll get a much smaller device. You could fit this circuit in a much smaller space if you used SMT and a different MCU. It will probably run off a lithium button cell too then.
I’d say a Microchip PIC16F628A and one of the FTDI Serial-USB chips will have you sucking diesel :)! Of course you’ll have to use ASM or C to program the PIC if you remove the BASIC Stamp 2. But a BS2 is just a PIC programmed to run basic.
There are companies that will produce bulk orders of small electronics goods (eg runs of 1,000) but you’d want to be sure you can sell it first as it is an investment.
If you wanted one or two there is a Bulgarian company, Olimex, who make really nice prototype PCB boards for you if you send them the appropriate CAD files. There is loads of free software that can do this (like KiCAD).
Links:
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Thanks for the info. Really appreciate it.
I was going to look into PICs like PIC16F628A as the cost is very appealing but I knew the stamp would be easy to work with from the get go as this is my first electronics project ever (Short of blinking an LED when I got the stamp). :)But if I do a version 2.0 I will try that PIC out. I looked into etching a board for this but seemed like too much hassle but I did give Eagle a go for circuit design I will checkout KiCAD. I got my part this morning that converts the iphone port 3.3v to 5.5 so power is not an issue.
Olimex seem really cool. If I bump into a passionate iphone owning money man and an interested electronics engineer I will be off. :)
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Well if you want a couple of blank PIC16F628As I have about 25 of them sitting at home in a bag doing nothing. I use them to build MIDI controllers, which is a, similar application, so they should suit.
You should be able to run everything of 3.3v too.
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David,thats just the best thing i’ve read in ages. Real buttons on an iphone – take that to the dragons!!! And of course maybe a patent or two…B.
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Well if you want a couple of blank PIC16F628As I have about 25 of them sitting at home in a bag doing nothing. I use them to build MIDI controllers, which is a, similar application, so they should suit.
You should be able to run everything of 3.3v too.[/quote:bc7f8866b2]
Cool Thanks. Yes keeping everything at 3.3v would be the best. I will drop you a p.m about one if I get to round to 2.0. Cheers.Hi jediboy, thanks. As I said others appear somewhat more progressed toward a product for market but just taking to long for me: See http://icontrolpad.com/
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@david4482 nice to see an electonics discussion. Cool project 8)
For soldering newbees these are great starter kits
http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=30&zenid=158a7d7157b50531ee610061acba4ba4
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