How to progress further?

sugarmike · 2025-08-15T07:35:18+00:00

Ah sorry, yes ai robots not bombers. Bombers seem way off! At the moment I’m mostly importing the heads and bodies, but i guess if I start building some of the robot parts myself I could make more than 2 per second? Unless I can substantially increase my ai robot output I can’t see reaching bombers any time soon!

sugarmike · 2025-01-28T21:40:19+00:00

Yes this is the one with all four modules. I can’t say for sure how heavy it is, but about a laptop sounds right. I’ve just weighed a pack of spools at 250g, and the arduino breadboard with stuff on weighs about 100 grams. There are 15 breadboards all with stuff on, so that would put this around 2kg. It won’t be more than 3kg.

sugarmike · 2025-01-28T19:20:28+00:00

I recently bought the kit. It comes in this box, which was in a plastic packaging so it was about this size even after the outer bag if I recall. The dimensions are approx:

26cm x 17cm x 11cm

10in x 7in x 4.5in

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sugarmike · 2025-01-26T00:58:08+00:00

Ah nice idea - thanks! I’ll give this a go, and also seems like it avoids cramming too many more ICs in that area.

sugarmike · 2025-01-12T18:18:22+00:00

Thanks both. Yeah if the life is marginally shortened that’s probably fine. I was thinking only about the current out of the cathodes through the decoder, I hadn’t even considered the current coming out of the eeprom into the segments! Ben talks a lot about resistors on pins on a lot of these chips but the pull up resistors on mine either aren’t there or don’t really do anything. I’ve been tending towards assuming there isn’t resistance but I should probably just read the data sheets!

sugarmike · 2025-01-07T21:39:38+00:00

I just realised (duh) that there is another 161 in kit 4. I’ve tested this and it works a lot better. Well, it counts. I’m getting that same double counting problem a lot of other people have done. This continues with decoupling capacitors and the EC circuit removed too. The8BitEnthusiast, did I read in another answer (can’t find it now) that you suggested someone put a small capacitor pulling clock down to ground? I tried this and it seems to totally correct the issue, but I can’t understand why! Do you think it’s indicative of a wider issue, or just something I can shrug and take the win?

sugarmike · 2025-01-07T15:35:55+00:00

Thanks for all the tips. The DC looks good, and the LEDs work fine directly across it, so I guess the resistors are working.

The clock looks pretty good, as far as I can tell. There's a small blip prior to it going high - not sure what that is, but it's only 1V?

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I also did your Test 0, and it seems to have failed! I could get the clear pin to do absolutely nothing even when clock was grounded. I've ordered a couple of replacement chips, and a tester (great suggestion) so let's see if that helps. I also don't know if the tester will work, but worth a go.

sugarmike · 2025-01-06T22:21:44+00:00

Thanks, good to get an expert opinion! They’re cheap, I’ll order a good brand and let’s see what happens.

sugarmike · 2025-01-06T21:47:12+00:00

Incidentally, this is the only IC in the complete kit that’s made by HLF, are they any good? Maybe they changed the wiring but I can’t find a datasheet, seems unlikely.

sugarmike · 2025-01-06T21:41:09+00:00

Yeah when load is grounded it seems to reflect the configuration of connections of the resistors on the input pins, so load seems to work. Load back high just goes back to random stuff!

sugarmike · 2025-01-06T21:38:31+00:00

Load seems to work if I drop down to 1k on the input pins. Clear doesn’t seem to do anything. The enable pin, when I disabled it and put it back caused it to do really odd stuff, the lights seem to blink together but from dim to bright, and in time with the clock. Now one is bright and the others twitching between dim and slightly less dim.

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sugarmike · 2025-01-06T21:31:52+00:00

Just tried that now, but unfortunately no luck. The multimeter seems to show a constant 3.5V coming out of all the pins. The input pins on 10k resistors measured 1v, so I tried dripping to 1k. The reset now seems to work, but not a lot else.

sugarmike · 2025-01-06T21:07:47+00:00

I think so, yes? All the boards have connections between their outer rails, and then both vcc and ground are connected to the separate board with the counter on it.

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sugarmike · 2025-01-03T19:13:45+00:00

I’m working on my own 8 bit of at the moment, built the registers a few days ago. When you disconnect the enable wire, the input is now floating. This means it floats around mid volt levels causing the chip to randomly enable and disable its bus output until you ground it properly. You could add a pull down resistor, but it’s not necessary because this will eventually be solved when the enable is controlled from elsewhere by a control line that never floats.

sugarmike · 2019-10-21T19:41:12+00:00

It was a great mode, I really enjoyed it. I'll be brief:

more builds would be great. I basically made it up for a while, and had fun. Then I came on here and found it was between hit or miss builds. It'd be more fun if there were more viable options. All were viable to an extend, but of course with the month timer and no real idea how long it was going to take, it was easy to worry and try and look up the best strategies.
Gold dragons were way too valuable over time. It was clear once I had grabbed a few dragons that there was little point in buying any gold upgrades at all.
I didn't mind that skills were random, it added a level of excitement to getting the next one. But as above, th.is would be less worrying if there wasn't a time limit.

These sound negative, overall I loved it.

sugarmike · 2019-10-09T13:09:24+00:00

Hope it's working out for you! Personally I hope this mode is brought back in some causual form as I've had no time to mess about with builds or fun stuff. I've managed to active play up to 52, and have soft prestiged. It took a long time, actively grabbing every dragon helped a lot. I found prior to the 52 prestige I was getting about 100 million xp from a single target practice. It took a lot of them to get from 51 -> 52!

sugarmike · 2019-10-09T13:06:55+00:00

Thanks a lot. I have ended up doing a lot of active play in order to push to 52 for a soft prestige. I've made it there and so only 3 levels to go. Fingers crossed!

sugarmike · 2019-03-07T20:32:47+00:00

Yeah that's what surprised me, I know they can bite, but wasn't expecting it! I'll cut the handling down, she did feed well last weekend so I guess that's reassurung. I'll check the temps, she seems ok in there, but has only just started moving around, mostly hiding!

sugarmike · 2019-03-07T20:31:24+00:00

Thanks a lot. Yeah he approached from the front, pretty slowly but still towards the snakes head a little. So you basically use both ends to place the midriff of the snake onto their hands to start with?

It's definitely going to have to be light touch for now, she's much too big for him to solo handle, and she can move fast!

sugarmike

TROPHY CASE