Looking for Ideas & Components

Use an Arduino or R-Pi for control. Both of those have a number of options for sensors and displays that are really cheap.

Jeev said:

Use an Arduino or R-Pi for control. Both of those have a number of options for sensors and displays that are really cheap.

Click to expand...

This would be my solution as well. An Arduino or even something faster to do the detection and perhaps drive the LED's... and a Raspberry pi if you wanted to put this information on a SCADA or dashboard. Total cost would be a fraction of the PLC solution and not necessarily worse, although it will potentially involve more work from you.

Yeah, I'm definitely leaning hard toward the Pi 3 or Arduino solution. After some pricing and educated guesses on others, it appears this project will cost at least $750 US if I use a PLC. My wife was not too pleased with that price tag but said okay to something in the $350 range. Anything much over that will take extra salesmanship on my part and I'm not the best at that.

If I had to take a guess, I would say that you can get it done with something uC based for $200-$300. The display might be the most expensive bit, but if you're willing to put up with 7-seg styling, Chinese LEDs from eBay and some soldering, it should be fine.

Steve Etter said:

Yeah, I'm definitely leaning hard toward the Pi 3 or Arduino solution. After some pricing and educated guesses on others, it appears this project will cost at least $750 US if I use a PLC. My wife was not too pleased with that price tag but said okay to something in the $350 range. Anything much over that will take extra salesmanship on my part and I'm not the best at that.

Click to expand...

There is a free, time limited runtime of CoDeSys that loads on the Raspberry Pi if you want to program in PLC-speak.

Download here: https://store.codesys.com/codesys-control-for-raspberry-pi-sl.html?___store=en

Without paying it times out every 2 hours. You could probably include some Reset button that would reset the game every so often. to keep hi scores you'll have to program writing to the SD card but lots of info if you dig around here:
https://forum.codesys.com/viewforum.php?f=21

ndzied1 said:

Without paying it times out every 2 hours. You could probably include some Reset button that would reset the game every so often. to keep hi scores you'll have to program writing to the SD card

Click to expand...

If you did this just have the PLC trigger a TOF timer that interrupts the power for a few seconds as long as it is not in a game.

Aabeck said:

If you did this just have the PLC trigger a TOF timer that interrupts the power for a few seconds as long as it is not in a game.

Click to expand...

If I go here, I'll pay for the license. First, it's only right and, second, we're a non-profit. Doing anything would kind of undermine the meaning of doing charity work. I know there is technically nothing wrong with the reset method, but on the other hand, I think it would cross a boundary planning to do it that way long term. It's only about $65 for a single license anyway.

I like the CLICK from AD, but the older DirectLocgic series of processors have the SEG command that auto-magically takes the value of a register and formats a set of (7) physical outputs on the PLC to drive a 7-segment display. The DirectLogic PLCs also have higher-capacity DC outputs than the CLICK. I used the DL-06 to build some carnival-style games a few years ago. They turned out great.


LED tape is perfect for creating 7-segment displays. It IS a lot of soldering, though. Get a good temp-controlled iron and some good solder. Don't try to solder anything heavier than 20awg wire to the tape's pads; it won't work, and it'll give you fits as you try.






-rpoet

rpoet said:

Get a good temp-controlled iron and some good solder. Don't try to solder anything heavier than 20awg wire to the tape's pads; it won't work, and it'll give you fits as you try.

Click to expand...

I like this guy...
https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D...ion/dp/B00ANZRT4M?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_2593162011

+1 on the Raspberry PI solution, with the CoDeSys runtime. You may have some learning curve if you have never programmed CoDeSys before, should not be too hard. Just let me know if you need something to get you jump started, I may be able to set up a basic project for you to start from, so you don't have to start from scratch. I am not overly familiar with PI I/O's from CoDeSys, but should be able to work that out.


For things like high scores: be aware that the PI runtime does not support persistent variables. So you'd have to write additional logic to save to SD, read from SD if you want to keep high scores after a power cycle.

Steve Etter said:

If I go here, I'll pay for the license. First, it's only right and, second, we're a non-profit. Doing anything would kind of undermine the meaning of doing charity work. I know there is technically nothing wrong with the reset method, but on the other hand, I think it would cross a boundary planning to do it that way long term. It's only about $65 for a single license anyway.

Click to expand...

I agree with your view... but do bear in mind that SD cards are prone to failure and retrieving the license can be painful. There are plenty of resources on how to be covered (basically image the card after installing the license) so that when the inevitable SD card failure happens you're covered.

I would still go down the microcontroller route though.