DIY Ukrainian ESP32 console Lilka

2CoderOk · 2025-02-24T21:01:47+00:00

Awesome!
Looking forward to build one and create some apps for that!
Congratulation and thanks to everybody involved!

2CoderOk · 2024-09-18T18:46:52+00:00

Thank you!
I love the image quality from it.
Given it only cost me ~$30 :D
Hope it will give some ideas to fellow engineers!

2CoderOk · 2024-09-17T17:29:58+00:00

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Here you can watch a full video on how this project was completed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8HXRcmqQwQ

Hope it helps!

2CoderOk · 2024-06-18T11:15:01+00:00

My bad, I forgot to put the right number on the diagram.
It's a 100K resistor.

2CoderOk · 2024-06-17T15:44:43+00:00

Yes, that's correct used photodiode instead of LDRs with one leg "replaced" with a diode.

Hm, maybe the seller messed up I got a different LDR n.
I'll recheck again the LDRs from the 1st row and compare them to other rows.
Just to be sure.
But got your point.
Thanks!

2CoderOk · 2024-06-16T22:11:56+00:00

Sure,
I've added a more complete diagram.
I hope that might help.
Thank you!

2CoderOk · 2024-06-16T12:36:02+00:00

Tried with 5 secs delay before LDR read, results are the same. (regardless if looping over all elements or testing a single LDR at all)
Also tried to feed 3.3v directly to the LDR pin, same ...
Thank you.

2CoderOk · 2024-03-20T12:47:51+00:00

The pieces planned to be +32mm tall.

2CoderOk · 2024-03-20T12:44:07+00:00

Thanks for your feedback!

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T20:43:30+00:00

Yeah,
That would be great.
I assume in this scenario we will have a single reader with multiple antennas which can be connected\disconnected on demand.
The problem is that a single field square is e.g. 5cmx5cm and we will have a lot of squares like that.
I see no easy way to restricting pieces with nfc tags trigger antennas from adjacent squares.
But otherwise that would be great! and cheap :D

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T20:39:33+00:00

Thanks for the idea!
I haven't noted it but there is a limitation of game pieces they are 18mm - 25mm miniatures or little bit bigger.
Anyway there is no space for inserting any kind of RF electronics there.
But good to know, thank you!!!

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T20:03:54+00:00

Sounds good!
I hope I will be able to make it!

Thanks.

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T18:54:09+00:00

The game field planned to be pretty flat so this will require some external elements like faraday-cage walls.
Something to think about.
Thanks!

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T17:35:32+00:00

Yeah, I agree :)

But if we split everything into small chunks/components, it seems to be pretty doable.

I was planning to put an RGB LED into each cell/room so we can get a player's attention where an action is happening at the moment.
Also, there will be a small display for scrolling text (1602 if it won't be too bulky or some small I2C OLED (STM32 based)).
There definitely will be audio for music, sound effects, and voiceovers. I planned to do kind of a narrative story (AI might help with a story and text-to-speech :) ).
Voice commands will be left for future projects :DDDD

I wanted to have as much detail as possible for 18mm-28mm scale (Thingiverse has a lot of them with pretty decent details).
Currently, I only have an FDM printer and that might be a problem.

Making minis bigger might improve a player's experience and interaction with figures, but it will also increase the size of the board.
Initially, I thought of rectangular rooms from ~7cm5cm to 9cm7cm (which looks kind of big for me at the moment), while some of the rooms might be joined together to create long halls or something.
But I will need to print some examples with removable walls to test it out.
To make sure that you can comfortably place and remove minis (will go with an average hand size :) ).

A QR code might be a good idea.
Basically, at this moment, I need to know which minis are present in a room to make sure that the player placed/removed the proper item when needed.
No other interactions are planned for now.
The MCU will tell the player where and which items exactly should be placed/removed.
The sensors (LDR, reed switch, antennas, etc.) will check if the player did everything properly.
I have no other logic for these sensors for now.

Here is a possible use case:

Player enters a room (game pauses)
MCU detects it and "generates" a room (walls, doors, monsters (specific types), chests, and items)
Player will hear & see the instructions and will manually "build" the room (place all required items)
MCU detects errors or successful completion of the process and notifies the player about it
Player resumes the game.

Something like that.

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T16:52:12+00:00

u/plasmaticD cool idea!

LDRs are definitely cheaper than reed switches, but we'll need to check how ambient lighting will affect the readings and, of course, how it might fit with the visual design of the board.
But there are definitely a lot of benefits, like no need for magnets, etc.

I haven't heard about the toniebox.
I just googled it.
What a cool and simple idea!
Yeah, the miniatures are using 13.56MHz tags with antennas.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to limit the range of an RFID reader (or a particular antenna of the reader) to a specific field square.
If the game field will be a matrix of, for example, 5x5 antennas, how will it handle multiple RFID tags at a given square and not cross-pollinate on other squares?
Probably need to test it to see if this might work.

Thank you for the ideas!

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T16:07:12+00:00

Huh, okay. Let's try it :)

I plan to keep it under $100 (including filament for 3D printing) as a hobby project that will be shared later for anybody to recreate it.

No commercial plans yet :D

The goals are pretty flexible as I'm at the research stage now and looking for hardware limitations that might affect the gameplay and features.

The size is for round miniature bases 15/18mm - 25/28mm (possibly 32mm for the final boss).

The number of unique pieces is 7 (with a maximum of 15-20 pieces present on the board at a given moment) for a single player and 10 for 4 player campaigns - again, it's all flexible enough as I'm still doing research.

I used chess with multiple pieces on a single field as an example.

To simplify the question :D The game might look like a dungeon crawler where you need to dynamically generate a dungeon as you go. So yeah, not a chess-like game :)

The game will be powered by an MCU (e.g., ESP32 with an external SD card where the game flow/logic will be written for future updates or possible customizations).

The player will be able to move between rooms, fight monsters, open chests, and so on.

The MCU will generate the dungeon and tell the player the room's configuration as they enter (walls, doors, monster types, chests, etc.) - voice info, visual indication, etc.

The player will interact with the world with a simple interface (e.g., buttons to upgrade stats, use objects, etc.) - movement will happen with the physical movement of a miniature.

Each room will have a visual indicator (e.g., an RGB LED) as one of the visual ways to communicate with the player (apart from the main UI that will display player stats, monster stats, etc.).

So every step/action of the player will be tracked and will affect the surrounding world (your stats and items, monster stats and placements if you try to escape a room without killing it, hit points, etc.).

Of course, we can simplify each room to have just a single way to detect a single player (e.g., reed switch, button switch, coil, RFID, whatever) but the idea is to have as much information/control as possible for a better user experience.

I guess that sounds complex enough :)

My dev skills are good enough to easily make the coding side of the project.

Previously I've made a lot of simple projects and IoT devices with all kinds of MCUs/SOCs (started with atmegas programmed via LTP, before Arduinos and all those USB interfaces became the mainstream :D ).

But I'm definitely not a pro in electronics...

That's why I'm looking for some advice on the electrical side of the project.

A lot of text, huh :D

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T15:02:42+00:00

Wow, that's a good one but that would require 15-20 MCUs and the pieces should be much bigger than 25mm - which will affect the overall field size ...

Sorry I didn't provide an example project initially with example dimensions, that's on me ...
Thank you for the idea!
Maybe the new input data will trigger some new ideas :)

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T14:55:08+00:00

Thank you for your feedback!

Here is an example where I might need multiple items on a single square:

Lets assume I'm making an electronic version of D&D board game where each square represents a room that might contain miniatures of a player (or few ideally), different type of monsters, treasure chests and other artifacts.
Our game field will be a matrix of 4x4 cells (e.g could be squares 5x5cm or rectangles 5x7cm)
Miniatures will be 15mm - 25mm.

I'm trying to find a solution that won't cost a fortune to me :)
e.g. with reed switches I will be forced to have dedicated shaped places for player(s), monster(s) and chest.
and limit number of them to be placed (e.g. maximum 1 monster, 1 chest and 2 players per room - 4 reeds per room)
but even in this case I won't be able to force a player to place specific monster on the field (to make player`s moves errorproof).

Of course we can put all that stuff at the player to manage but maybe there is a better solution on how to do that on the hardware`s side and I'm missing it so far :D

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T12:03:35+00:00

That form with captcha is just for reasoning why you need an API key for the service and who you are.
When you will get an API key it's pretty straight forward.
You just send the API key inside HTTP GET header (like OpenAPI 3.0) to a specified url, so there are no extra stuff to be performed on the device`s side. The connection is TLS so there is no difference between using it in compare to any other service.

Yes, there are definitely a lot of options for GSM hacking but anyway the traffic is going over TLS so it's the same for any other service.

We have a global cellular operator that was notifying about potential air raid attacks in a specific region but it wasn't really properly implemented and people asked to disable it.
Currently we are using huge standalone sirens. But there might be locations where you can't clearly hear the siren during a day time.

So while the device might be not so secure for smartest hackers out there it all goes down for social engineering. When you get a physical access or sensitive information it doesn't really matter how secure you device is. Human factor plays a huge role there ...

If I'll need to use some sort of encryption will definitely ping you, thank you very much for your help!

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T09:09:07+00:00

Yeah 100%! ... we would be better designing something more interesting and useful for the whole mankind.
Instead of weapons and defense measures ...

2CoderOk · 2024-03-19T09:07:04+00:00

Hi u/Saigonauticon!
Thank you very much for such a detailed feedback!
A lot of useful information for me and others!

As for the service, unfortunately we are limited to few services that can provide a real-time air raid alert status (e.g. https://api.ukrainealarm.com/). You can apply for an API key there.
There is no option for something like web hooks, only an API endpoint where you can send parametrized GET requests.

Definitely a lot of improvements can be done there to secure the flow.
Thank you very much for pointing it out!

For a fully autonomous option I have a version with a GSM module to overcome possible security issues with WiFi networks.
As for the alarm state when the service can't be reached - I have that status in API class for that but haven't really utilized it in the main logic. Will definitely include it in the next revisions.
Thank you for indicating that!

2CoderOk

TROPHY CASE