Circuit Maker 2000 Pro 2000.rar
Dulce Donten
While we wait (forever?) for a possible CFW, this thread is going to collect information on known mods and repositories with useful mods/tools/info for the Data Frog SF2000. I do not claim to have produced any of this information or software/tools. All credit goes to the original authors and makers. If you think you deserve credit and I missed you, please let me know and I will edit this. If you would rather I remove your tool, or credit, or both, let me know and will also do this too.
This free program was originally created by Altium Limited. The common filenames for the program's installer are circuitmaker-6.2.exe, CircuitMaker.exe, cirmaker.exe, Demo.exe or DXP.EXE etc. The following versions: 6.2, 1.2 and 1.1 are the most frequently downloaded ones by the program users. We cannot guarantee that the program is safe to download as it will be downloaded from the developer's website. Before launching the program, check it with any free antivirus software.
So things have been progressing in the background - I got the kindle and tore it down to the light layer - need to see if I can power the LEDs directly or if I'll need to make a new pcb. 5V from a USB power bank will light up two, but probably need a constant current driver to run them properly. They are a cool white though so a green layer will be essential to tie it to the warm light of the bulbs elsewhere.
Getting close now to having the screen mounted and displaying a suitable pip-boy image. I've been doing some sanding and filling of smaller pieces, and plan on repainting with a different paint scheme to make it stand out a bit more. Once I get the screen mounted, the pi connected in the case and a few buttons hooked up I'll turn my attention to the software a bit more, while the slow boat from China brings more parts for the audio side...
@Evan J mentioned he had a problem with switches in the top piece, so I though I would have a look at my planned mod and see if it would fit. There is not a huge amount of room as shown below, but not as tight as the screen will be.
I'm using a 12mm tactile push-button and inserting it underneath the existing button. Originally I thought I would cut the existing button down to size and fit in beneath the spring, but woudl be tight and risk damaging the visible button piece if I screwed up so I went with mounting in under the existing button, and drill a hole for it to poke through.
I executed this poorly by trying it at home with a hand drill, instead of making a jig and doing it in a pillar drill at my local maker space, so mangled the piece a bit :( Still managed to salvage it and it looks like it works fine - maybe a millimeter to be removed from the button stop.
I tacked it in place with super glue and then went around it with hot glue to secure it. In time I might go for an expoy for a more permanent fit. I might have to 3D print a replacement if the damage to this one proves to great...
Loads of room, as long as I don't try to put a hat in there ;). Using the GPIO pins down that end may require soldering wires direct to the pi instead of headers and jumper pins. It will certainly be tight once all the wiring converges on the pi - maybe a GPIO expanded on the I2C bus would simplify the wiring of all the buttons?
The button no gives a satisfying click each time it is pressed, and I know it will work just fine with the pi. The three STAT/ITEM/DATA buttons will get similar treatment but with smaller 6mm push-buttons, but I'm going to do that more carefully so will have to wait for another day.
The two bulbs between the radio and geiger counter on the right hand side of the pip-boy would be easy to swap for LEDs, but I decided to go for LES bulbs instead. While the ones I got were rated for 6V, I wanted to see if I could get acceptable brightness for a 5V rail, and then switch that via a transistor from the 3V3 pi zero GPIO pins.
Also on the breadboard I've buttons to match me intended controls embedded in the pip-boy (WIP) so I can test all the electronics independently to the build. I'll run through all that another time when I have more of it working.
Part of the reason I ended up with an e-ink display is that it had the closest size to that of the opening in the model (a lost of the LCD displays have a wider aspect ratio that leads to some letterboxing). In addition I have always wanted to play around with them so seem like a good excuse.
Now, eink screens have much lower refresh rates (though I am hoping to be able to hack around and improve it a bit for partial refreshing when using the menu system), but at worst case it will just be able to cycle through some different wallpaper images. The advantage being that once an image has been displayed on the screen it is fixed, even if the power is removed. This will make it much less power hungry and will not have to worry so much about draining the battery.
I've gone for the Waveshare 4.2inch 400x300 black and white module - black and white over three colour to get a half decent refresh rate and to fit within the body without having to cut up anything. More of that in another post but before I built it into anything I wanted to do a test to ensure that everything worked so it was out with a pi and the user guide to see if I could get a pip-boy image of sorts onto the screen.
Wiring is courtesy of a JST header beneath the board, photo to remember the colour coding and then I hot glued some header to a piece of foam core to mock up the circuit. Below you can see that I managed to follow the instructions to download the relevant software and then, using the python 3 demo code as a base, upload a typical pip-boy screen using a pi zero W. The image remains even after the power is removed:
I'm happy that I got it all working without much fuss - the image needs cleaning up for the two-colour display (there is no native gray-scale) so the traditional screens may need a little tweaking, but adding a green filter and it looks like it will work nicely. Also scored a kindle with a broken screen for a tenner on ebay, so will be trying to extract the light layer and add front illumination to this screen without trashing it.
This build is going to take a little bit of thought to get right, and I'm trying to minimize the amount of irreversible changes I make in case they release some updates that are better than my efforts!
Outline plan is to fit a small screen behind the display, a pi zero up in the upper module, electronics to all the buttons, switches and dials so they work and click. A speaker on the radio module and working lights seems easy. Working geiger counter gauge with simulated radiation bursts.
Screen in the main module - getting on the right aspect ratio will be tricky and there is not much room to oversize and crop one. Could go a mini LCD screen or e-ink - both have their pros and cons.
Holo-tape deck - The button really needs to be amber and glowing as this is a major discrepancy between the prop and the in-game version that can be fixed with electronics. If possible a working numeric display would be cool, but there is not much space to play with - perhaps a tiny e-ink display would work? To be decided.
Geiger counter module - add a rotary encoder to the dial and maybe make it possible to click as well (using a rotary/push button). The three small buttons should be active, and clicky! The geiger counter module may be best built up on the side plate which may require trimming of the thin plastic bridge on the molding to allow it to easily slide inwards. The external wires could be commandeered to carry signal, but will probably just leave them cosmetic (or see if I can make them part of the fake geiger counter)
Radio module - speaker to fit in the slot, working dial either a pot or another rotary encoder (this gauge has stops on the rotation due to the radio dial bottoming out so may be better as a rotary potentiometer with physical end stops, unlike the upper one. Contacts on the rocker button so I can read it's state, and perhaps illuminating it when the speaker is on.
Battery initially a power bank concealed in the cuff, since there is plenty of room as my forearms are not hulk-like and it will be quick to change should it run out (raspberry pi could be in here too if the top does not work out).
Really awesome project. I've been working on this too. An easy way to get around the button problem (I've only done the big button so far) is to file down the stick that's moulded to the underneath of the button. That way it fits between the button and the button holder without having to modify anything else. The button works perfectly.
Hey @P.MO - Working on my own mods for the PB 2000 - pretty closely follows what you've already done - Glad I can walk in your footsteps for some of this - The tea-light hack was pretty ingenious.
My question for you is - have you received your OLED screens for the time/date on Holotape deck yet? I'm working on a similar-yet-also-different mod for it with regards to getting the holotape to trigger audio / music from the Pi as well as the button to light up.
I think I'll be able to get a screen in there, but may lose access to the middle set of cuff attachment points. Order a pare version of the eink panel I've got working in case I need to go ultra-low profile. In reality there is so much room in the cuff I could have the screen sticking out the back of the existing molding quite a bit to help it grip my wrist easier - this would need a lot more modification to the structure so I'm hoping the display will work out as is.
I've been looking into some of these same mods. I've gotten the pi zero and a button to just barely fit in the top panel, but the problem I have is the buttons I find that fit are too long (20mm) so there isn't much room to work with to feed wires from the gpio to the button pins.
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