I have just about finished the new Super Pixel Bros circuit board. This new version features an RGB LED matrix for the game and an LCD display to show your level, lives, score etc...

Pretty much all of the components will be hidden under the screen and I also made it so there are no PCB tracks to be seen on top of the board. It will use a little ipod battery and will be charged by plugging into your computers USB port. Let me know if you have any suggestions as to the board design before I send it off to get made.

PCB TOP


PCB BOTTOM

Looking good brad. The iPod battery - I am interested to hear more about them, how much are they and do they have their own charging circuitry onboard?

Sorry for the late reply Mitchy. The ipod batteries are very cheap and can be found on ebay for around $3 including postage.

The ipod batteries can be found here:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290540958882&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

As for charging the battery, microchip has a range of li-ion charger ic's - the one I use is a little 5 pin SMD device that costs around 50c each. You just input 5 volts to the chip, then it will charge a single cell 3.7v li-ion battery! You can set the charge rate with a resistors between two of the legs and it also has an output for a charging status LED.

The Battery charger chip can be found here:
http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en026250

Very cost effective indeed!

Interesting brad - what hardware are you going to use for the battery cable?

When you unwrap the outer sticker from the battery, it basically reveals two terminals. I just solder on a couple of wires to it and get rid of the existing connector. Nice and simple!

Can I have dibs on buying a board off you when there done, I'll cover all postage etc

Jay

The boards have been made and are $7 each, although they aren't selling them just yet because I am waiting on mine to arrive so I can test it. Once I can confirm that all is good, they will put them up on their site.

Now the thing is that they have only made three spares! I have a very strong feeling that they will sell out of those three very quickly so they will then make a larger batch (which doesn't take them long)

I will let people here know first that they are available.

Still waiting on the boards to arrive, But I have been working on programming the prototype - I can say that this version of the game is quite a bit better than my old ASM version

Looking forward to seeing one working or a demo video, might have to get one Brad

How easy do you find it soldering the SMD's? Or the 18f4550? the pins seem really close!.. Or do you have access to a PCB oven

I thought the boards would have arrived by now. I hate waiting sometimes!

We have excellent soldering equipment at work with microscopes which is super handy for SMD work. Although you only need a thin tip iron to solder them. I guess that's one thing that may make the new SPB board unpopular (having harder to solder smd chips)

did they arrive

Yes they did although I needed to fix a couple of problems. I have also added Stacy's monofonic audio chip to it to give it some sound fx. the new boards are being made as we speak / type...

Did you get my last email? I need to know if you want me to program the chips I have and send them out to you.

Stacy

my cousin was wondering if you can sent me the pixel bros pcb design so me and my uncle can make it too.

That is no problem, I am just waiting on the reply from the manufacturer to say they are ready. You will be able to buy them direct from their website when ready. ( I think they are about $5 each)