This is a continuation of my previous blog post. In this article I will show you how I finished up development for my game controller.
I need my Arduino for the next assignment regarding exploring MQTT communication so I’ve got to wrap up my networked controller! I was getting pretty unreliable readings from the encoders in my game controller and I also wasn’t exactly sure if I could see it working in the in-class game play demo’s, so here I am testing it out.
Update code with new rotary encoder library
Tom Igoe let me know that the encoder library I was using doesn’t work really well with the Arduino Nano 33 IoT. I re-wrote my code using this library. The updated code is v2.0 in this repo.
Get Ball Drop Game working on my computer
When getting the game up and running I referenced Tom’s documentation quite frequently. I downloaded his repo and ran the game locally by running the Mac OS application in the BallDropServer folder. To connect to the game you have to be sure that the Arduino is connected to the same network as the machine running the game by updating the “arduino_secrets.h” file. In my case, that’s the experimental network “sandbox370” here at ITP. Also be sure to update the “server” variable in the Arduino code to match the IP address of the Ball Drop Game Server as shown below. And voila! The game controller is networked!
Final Product
Issues
I’m really happy that I got my controller up and running consistently. The button connection was unreliable so I had to glue it into place even though I wanted to have the option to detach the top of the lid from the circuit.
Also, sometimes while playing the game the communication lags so the paddle doesn’t move all that smoothly. Before realizing this I thought there might still be something wrong with my controller. And, I think the game play doesn’t work with long continuous movements that well. It seems like the paddle position is only updated once the server has stopped reading messages or something. But short quick movements (turns of the encoders) seems to make the paddle movement respond really well.
Resources
https://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/labs/lab-using-a-rotary-encoder/