gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Announcements And Comments > DS brut (a hardware prototyping platform for the ds)

#164157 - gohai - Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:18 am

Hello all,


DS brut is an open source hardware prototyping platform for the Nintendo DS, aimed at enthusiasts, artists and game developers alike. We manufactured Slot-1 cartridges that allow you to control a basic UART, up to six GPIO lines, up to three ports for PWM, up to two ADCs, and I?C bus - all from within your own DS homebrew application.

see our website http://dsbrut.sukzessiv.net/


The cartridge features one Atmega168 microcontroller which - like the Arduino - can be very easily programmed via the TX/RX pins. By default, the microcontroller runs a programm (source code available) tailored for use with a LGPL-licensed library for devkitPro we developed, that makes it possible to access the microcontroller's peripherals from within your DS code. The library transparently handles all communication with the cartridge over SPI bus, which makes it extremely easy to use for developers. As its API closely resembles those of Arduino (analogRead(), digitalRead()), you can start prototyping right away if you have some experience on that platform!

We're launching this today and will ship out the first batch of cartridges sometime next week!


looking forward to your comments, cheers
gohai & gordo

#164196 - XtenDSProgrammer - Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:15 am

Okay I really want one to control some christmas lights, when/where can we get these beauties? I'm prepared to pay a bit for something like this.


- James
_________________
www.dsgamemaker.com

#164198 - gohai - Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:19 am

You can order them from the website ("Get one").. we are also shipping them out as standard letters if you just want to try out - the Euro also has just hit some year-low against the Dollar.. :)

Best regards,
gohai

#164199 - ps2aich - Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:35 am

A really cool piece of hardware for a reasonable price, very straight design.

I've read on the website, that an Arduino board is needed to flash the ATMega to a new firmware via the rx/tx pins.
I'm aware that using the libs, this would not be needed too often, but do you think a future hardware revision would be able to do this via the NDS (as in the announced DSerial Edge, which is of course more expensive and a little more sophisticated), so you won't need an Arduino board to flash it anymore?

#164201 - gohai - Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:04 pm

Thank you for your comments, ps2aich.

Instead of the Arduino, you can also use any other FTDI bridge that outputs TTL levels, but we thought that most people interested would probably already have some Arduinos laying around. Wrt to changing the firmware from the NDS - that would be indeed an interesting feature, you'd still need the toolchain on the PC to compile your code in the first place, though.

We're definitely looking into adding more functionality - a Z-modem type upload could even be possible without any hardware changes.. I think the bootloader on the Atmega could also be changed to accept input via the SPI port..

gohai

#164203 - ps2aich - Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:23 pm

Ah ok, do you know how big the Arduino community is currently? It's the first time I hear about it, but I can imagine that - when the ds brut is kind of simple Arduino 'implementation' - there might be already some applications waiting for an Arduino on a mobile device like the NDS????

#164231 - XtenDSProgrammer - Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:43 pm

So cheap too! Amazing. I'm currently deciding between this and DSerial, they should both impress my friends quite a bit ;)

Hoping to control some Christmas Lights do you think I could do that?


- James
_________________
www.dsgamemaker.com

#164288 - gohai - Sun Oct 26, 2008 10:45 am

Hi James,


I don't have much experience with fancy Christmas Lights, we use the analog ones over here :) What interface do you think of using?

gohai

#164293 - XtenDSProgrammer - Sun Oct 26, 2008 11:02 pm

As a matter of fact, I was hoping to use analogue lights for this job. TBH, I'm a n00b at electronics but a l33t homebrew programmer so I really do need to do some research.

I'm right in thinking this is something that can be used for home automation?


- James
_________________
www.dsgamemaker.com

#164297 - gohai - Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:32 am

I'd go and find a pre-build module that handles all the lights and then figure out how to connect the cartridge to that device. I suppose some of them have I/O lines or an I2C bus for controlling lights - that's some of the communication methods that DS brut currently supports. (just be aware that it's using 3.3v)

A quick solution could also be to just get a relay board (or do one yourself) that just open/closes arbitrary high-voltage circuits (like your lights) when one of DS bruts GPIO lines goes high/low.. that way you could at least turn on & off up to six light elements.

best of luck with your endeavours :)

gohai