JLCPCB Prototype for $2(Any Color): https://jlcpcb.com
The first PBC for my Pong / Tele-Tennis rebuild
The first PBC for my Pong / Tele-Tennis rebuild
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Good morning all…
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
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I've been working for a fortnight now trying to get the timings of these signals right and oh boy it's a right pain to try and get those timing syncs sorted without a scope.
Been watching all your previous videos on this tele tennis project… Would love to see you come back to it!
Why you are support and advertise China communist party economy? Do you approve of all human rights violations in China?
When I was an Electronics Apprentice at GEC back in the 70's we used to use SoT (Select on Test) stand off posts so we could tune each circuit with specific resistance values. Connect the scope and a precision variable resistance then select appropriate resistor combos to give the exact timing needed. Component tolerances meant every board was different on final test and we didnt want to use pots in a semi-Mil-spec application.
Fun times
I so want to make this as my Dad made this project in the 70's from that very article. Oh the memories. Thanks for showing us this.
Looking forward to this project. I used to get PW when I was growing up, The schematics were my pin-up's on the bedroom wall. Oh dear!
This is a blast from the past! I built one of these, but not from the Practically Wireless circuit. At the time I was working at TV Centre in one of the BBC studios, so had the full resources of the engineering workshops and stores to draw on. My colleague Eric designed the circuit from scratch, and since we had access to a full Black & Sync generator we didn't need that bit of the circuit. We did use 555's for the video elements. My input was to convert his circuit diagram onto Vero-board. The final result was built into one large Eddystone diecast box, with two small ones for the pots for the "paddles". It worked well, and we used to play on a 19" monitor! At one point we made adaptors so one of the paddles could be remoted to another studio! I remember reading Mr Hughes articles back in the day. It's fascinating that these simple analogue games have made a comeback as has the 555. I designed and made a door bell that mimicked the original Star Trek "Red Alert" siren around the same time! Endless fun!
EasyEda and JLCPCB are amazing. Pong was my first video game…76ish? along time ago. Very nice board.
You really need a 5 volt regulated supply (a 7805 fed from >7V or so would do). Feeding analogue electronics directly from batteries rather than a regulated source is asking for trouble, especially oscillators. In theory it shouldn't have any effect on a 555's divider chain / comparator pair, but analogue electronics is an awkward thing.
Well that is why you don't use ceramic caps in timing circuits, they suck. Remember, ceramic caps change their value depending on temperature and voltage (and some other things). Use plastic film caps or tantalums, depending on the value you need. Leave ceramics for decoupling, unless it's a small value and can be made cheap with NP0 dielectric.
Nice! I remember the previous video where you talked about the tele-tennis game, so I'm glad we're getting to see more of it.
Speaking of the 555 timer, at the moment I'm working using a 555 to generate a PWM signal to drive the speed control pin on a PWM fan to cool an LED light. I think I've figured out how to get a thermistor to control the duty cycle so it increases as the temperature increases, I just need to find a thermistor with a suitable resistance range. None of this new fangled microcontroller rubbish, a 555 timer does the job just fine!
Could it be a US version with 60hz sync
I bought a disc a while back that has 500+ issues of Practical Wireless in PDF format from 1932-2015. Some really good stuff. Easier to store than the paper version too.
Hey, I was wondering what soldering iron you use
That was really cool… so many fond memories of trying to tune our TVs to work with our Pong games!