TR-595E Custom Tricorder

[VincePopcorn]

I think Arky's UI and animation is beautiful.

I have no experience in coding animation though, but do have experience using After Effects and was able to knock up a few TNG style animations.

Here I've replaced the main graphics part of Arky's code with one that simply displays an animated GIF. It plays pretty well, and the memory on the Pico seems to have space for around 20 seconds or so of animation. It's not quite as crisp or smooth as the programmically animated sprites, but does allow for some more detailed animation design.

I've also updated the sound slightly. I found a really nice Tricorder sample (actually on the Generation soundtrack, link searchable on youtube), which I've EQ-ed a bit, to make the high pitch part stand out from the low frequency warble. I prefer it.

Video example attached.

 

[Arky]

I think Arky's UI and animation is beautiful.

I have no experience in coding animation though, but do have experience using After Effects and was able to knock up a few TNG style animations.

Here I've replaced the main graphics part of Arky's code with one that simply displays an animated GIF. It plays pretty well, and the memory on the Pico seems to have space for around 20 seconds or so of animation. It's not quite as crisp or smooth as the programmically animated sprites, but does allow for some more detailed animation design.

I've also updated the sound slightly. I found a really nice Tricorder sample (actually on the Generation soundtrack, link searchable on youtube), which I've EQ-ed a bit, to make the high pitch part stand out from the low frequency warble. I prefer it.

Video example attached.

Oh WOW. I wanted to do something like this but I'm terrible at animations. This is so cool!

 

[wystewart]

really nice work VincePopcorn, i look forward to seeing more of your design. Might you be able to post or send your scanning sound file?
Nice work on the GIF playback. What did you use to create the GIF file?

I should hopefully be posting on my variant of the design over the Christmas break. I have everything working, just need to do some more work on some basic/initial LCARs displays and paint the enclosure. I have 12 different styles of LCARs displays coded, right now just the side and middle bars and buttons. Next to add some animations. I am considering moving to Qt Quick Ultralite if Qt might be willing to offer a reasonable license for individual, personal projects (QT is available free but requires an underlying OS (LINUX), Qt Quick Ultralite that can run baremetal or FreeRTOS is not free).

All custom boards. Some design highlights
main board: STM32H753 based board @480MHz with gyro (LSM6DSO), magnetometer (LIS3MDL), Lipo charging circuit (MCP73831) and battery gauge (BQ27441), TAS2505 SAI sound chip, TSC2007 touch screen controller, 24 bit RGB LCD interface with TPS61042 backlight driver. automatic power selection between USB, QI and battery. External GPS module supported.
Upper LED panels all with WS2812 RGB fully programmable LEDs (colors and sequencing can easily be changed)
Mid touch panel with MPR121 touch controller
Lower panel with WS2812 LEDs and MPR121 touch panel
LCD is higher resolution than any other project, being 640x480, 24bit RGB
QI charger with upper LED panel used to show charging status
on/off via hall magnetic IC.
All LCARS displays, red alert are rendered in realtime and not fixed graphics images (some images such as starfleet logo are graphics files though)
Sound WAV and MP3 playback with software mixer to be able to play multiple sounds at same time.

Using FreeRTOS, and I have ditched the rather limited and buggy Arduino IDE for PlatformIO. It is so much better! but some effort to get working.

 

[VincePopcorn]

really nice work VincePopcorn, i look forward to seeing more of your design. Might you be able to post or send your scanning sound file?
Nice work on the GIF playback. What did you use to create the GIF file?

I should hopefully be posting on my variant of the design over the Christmas break. I have everything working, just need to do some more work on some basic/initial LCARs displays and paint the enclosure. I have 12 different styles of LCARs displays coded, right now just the side and middle bars and buttons. Next to add some animations. I am considering moving to Qt Quick Ultralite if Qt might be willing to offer a reasonable license for individual, personal projects (QT is available free but requires an underlying OS (LINUX), Qt Quick Ultralite that can run baremetal or FreeRTOS is not free).

All custom boards. Some design highlights
main board: STM32H753 based board @480MHz with gyro (LSM6DSO), magnetometer (LIS3MDL), Lipo charging circuit (MCP73831) and battery gauge (BQ27441), TAS2505 SAI sound chip, TSC2007 touch screen controller, 24 bit RGB LCD interface with TPS61042 backlight driver. automatic power selection between USB, QI and battery. External GPS module supported.
Upper LED panels all with WS2812 RGB fully programmable LEDs (colors and sequencing can easily be changed)
Mid touch panel with MPR121 touch controller
Lower panel with WS2812 LEDs and MPR121 touch panel
LCD is higher resolution than any other project, being 640x480, 24bit RGB
QI charger with upper LED panel used to show charging status
on/off via hall magnetic IC.
All LCARS displays, red alert are rendered in realtime and not fixed graphics images (some images such as starfleet logo are graphics files though)
Sound WAV and MP3 playback with software mixer to be able to play multiple sounds at same time.

Using FreeRTOS, and I have ditched the rather limited and buggy Arduino IDE for PlatformIO. It is so much better! but some effort to get working.

Wow! Sounds amazing. Does all this fit inside the original 3d printed body, or have you redesigned it to accommodate?

Happy to share the sounds. I'll get them uploaded to a Google drive link, asap!

I made the animations in Adobe After Effects, but it sounds like you've nailed the real time animations. I did think a good mix would be to have real time for the layout, and LCARS but add GIF animations for small portions of the screen that need more complex graphics. However, that is beyond my programming skills. Happy to help out though, if you want me to make any little bits to drop into your UI.

 

[wystewart]

Wow! Sounds amazing. Does all this fit inside the original 3d printed body, or have you redesigned it to accommodate?

Yes it should in Arky's TR595E body which is a bit larger than the standard TR590 tricorder body. In my case the larger size is needed, since the minimum display size for 640x480 resolution is 2.4". But I did make a number of modifications to Arky's design and had it printed at JLC.

Happy to share the sounds. I'll get them uploaded to a Google drive link, asap!

Thanks!

I made the animations in Adobe After Effects, but it sounds like you've nailed the real time animations. I did think a good mix would be to have real time for the layout, and LCARS but add GIF animations for small portions of the screen that need more complex graphics. However, that is beyond my programming skills. Happy to help out though, if you want me to make any little bits to drop into your UI.

I might take you up on your offer. And as you say, I might breakdown and use some GIFs for more complex graphics within the LCARs display. Right now my LCARs displays are mostly static. For animations so far I have scrolling text at the top of the screen, an animated red alert, and moving bar display like Arky's. I'm using a Truetype open rendering library, to be able to scale text easily, but it might a little too much for my processor to render the scrolling text at the top of the display. I might have to pre-render as graphics first to get speed out of it.

 

[JaredTS486]

Finally getting around to sharing my build in progress. Arky thanks for sharing all of your hard work on this.

I made a few adjustments to the 3D model as I built it.

Links to my Fusion files:
Door (w/ID)
Main Body

Not super happy about my decals / diffusers, printed them on sticker photo paper. Kind of gave up. Let me know if you know of any other sources for higher quality decals / diffusers. New body shape let me put in a slightly bigger battery.

Added a notch to give the LCD screen a little more room. Maybe a newer / older model but the one from Adafruit was slightly too large.
Some modifications to the back plate supports.

Modified the lid to enclose the hinges, no need for screws or masking with putty. Added some supports and additional larger magnet slot for a wider magnetic field. (I hate reed switches). Also made lid hold closes with another magnet.

 

[Arky]

Finally getting around to sharing my build in progress. Arky thanks for sharing all of your hard work on this.

I made a few adjustments to the 3D model as I built it.

Links to my Fusion files:
Door (w/ID)
Main Body

View attachment 1767764 View attachment 1767765

Not super happy about my decals / diffusers, printed them on sticker photo paper. Kind of gave up. Let me know if you know of any other sources for higher quality decals / diffusers. New body shape let me put in a slightly bigger battery.
View attachment 1767766View attachment 1767767

Added a notch to give the LCD screen a little more room. Maybe a newer / older model but the one from Adafruit was slightly too large.
Some modifications to the back plate supports.
View attachment 1767768

Modified the lid to enclose the hinges, no need for screws or masking with putty. Added some supports and additional larger magnet slot for a wider magnetic field. (I hate reed switches). Also made lid hold closes with another magnet.
View attachment 1767769View attachment 1767770

Looks great! I like what you did with the hinge slots- that's a way better solution than what I came up with. Also noticed that you were able to properly round out the corners on the front scanner array. I ended up giving up and using greenstuff instead!

 

[GSAce]

I used one of these as the display- I'll have to dig out my notes but I can get you the pinouts to wire it directly to the pico. The adafruit displays are a bit hard to come by right now unfortunately but I'm pretty sure you can use the same pinouts on something similar.

i was just wondering if i could get the pinouts you used to connect the pico to the screen?

 

[Mr.Engineer]

Well, me too. I'm so new to these Pico and Arduino stuff, kinda got lost trying to map the ports from the program for the LCD connection.

i was just wondering if i could get the pinouts you used to connect the pico to the screen?

 

[GSAce]

I have nearly finished my first tricorder following arky’s designs. This is my very first time soldering anything to blank pcb’s. Think I did a good job. All I have left is getting the screen setup and paint the body

 

[Mr.Engineer]

WOw.

I have nearly finished my first tricorder following arky’s designs. This is my very first time soldering anything to blank pcb’s. Think I did a good job. All I have left is getting the screen setup and paint the body.

 

[amltech]

I'm finally back after almost a year to work on my build. I had to move so a lot of my stuff ended up needing to be rebuilt. I'm at the stage where I need to wire up the QI plate and battery charger to the kit. I ended up with the Adafruit mini lipo charger, however I'm having an issue figuring out where to connect it to the pi. It appears that this board only charges the battery and doesn't provide an output from the battery. Did anyone else use this or did they go some other method to charge the battery/power the board?

 

[Mr.Engineer]

I'm finally back after almost a year to work on my build. I had to move so a lot of my stuff ended up needing to be rebuilt. I'm at the stage where I need to wire up the QI plate and battery charger to the kit. I ended up with the Adafruit mini lipo charger, however I'm having an issue figuring out where to connect it to the pi. It appears that this board only charges the battery and doesn't provide an output from the battery. Did anyone else use this or did they go some other method to charge the battery/power the board?

I tested with the Qi Wireless Charging method in 2022 and it worked as a power source. I won't say it's a success as a charger yet since I am stuck at the LCD and Pico stage. There is a connection diagram which I remembered drawing it up but I can't remember if it was in my blog or still in the hard drive.

Anyway, I did not use the Adafruit chargers at all, just the usual TP4056 LiPo charger modules from the Internet. Assuming that the mini charger you got from Adafruit is Product ID 4410, and assuming the chip is the MCP73831/2 (because of the optional 500mA solderable link), I think it functions as a LiPo charger with no load sharing options. In theory, you can solder the positive and engative wires of your load parallel to the battery. If this works, great. But during charging, necause of the absense of a load sharing circuit, your battery might not fully charge or other complications.

 

[amltech]

I tested with the Qi Wireless Charging method in 2022 and it worked as a power source. I won't say it's a success as a charger yet since I am stuck at the LCD and Pico stage. There is a connection diagram which I remembered drawing it up but I can't remember if it was in my blog or still in the hard drive.

Anyway, I did not use the Adafruit chargers at all, just the usual TP4056 LiPo charger modules from the Internet. Assuming that the mini charger you got from Adafruit is Product ID 4410, and assuming the chip is the MCP73831/2 (because of the optional 500mA solderable link), I think it functions as a LiPo charger with no load sharing options. In theory, you can solder the positive and engative wires of your load parallel to the battery. If this works, great. But during charging, necause of the absense of a load sharing circuit, your battery might not fully charge or other complications.

View attachment 1798401

Thanks. I had thought about just running in parallel, but I wasn't sure if the charger and battery would handle it properly. I think I'm going to try it with the Powerboost charger, since it does have a charger and a load sharing circuit.

 

[GSAce]

Well I found out that one of my 4017 chips was faulty and am waiting on some replacements as well as more led’s since I was using too high of temp on soldering iron and melted a bunch. But I did reprint the body and also got the screen working now.
Going to prime and paint over the next few days

 

[Mr.Engineer]

Well I found out that one of my 4017 chips was faulty and am waiting on some replacements as well as more led’s since I was using too high of temp on soldering iron and melted a bunch. But I did reprint the body and also got the screen working now.
Going to prime and paint over the next few days

Yeah those 4017 ICs are static sensitive and desoldering them can be a pain in the rear. Maybe I am lucky as I live in a country with a 88% humidity so the static issues are minimised.

Anyway, before you do that, maybe you could take a look if there are any clock pulses at the 4017's Pin #14 or if it has been soldered properly.

But I'm still looking for a reasonably priced soldering iron with Earth connection.

 

[amltech]

The powerboost charger arrived today and I was able to wire it up to the pico + LCD, it looks like it's going to work well.