Hello everyone. I am trying to connect an electronic dartboard computer to a switchboard and having problems. When i connect everything together it should work but it doesnt. Its as if all the connections and the distance of all the cables create to mutch resistence the computer goes crazy and gives me errors as if there were a number stuck. Can anyone help please?

 

Here is the connections i made. The dartboard computer has 2 ports of 8 conections to make the combinations.

 

Do you have a hook schematic or diagram?
Max.

 

No i dont. The page with the writing is the result the computer should give me when the first port makes a connection with the second port. Each port has 8 connections.

And it all works but when the cable between the board and the computer is too long and or start to add conections to the botons on the board add up is when the problems begin.

The computer goes crazy and doesnt sum up properly. when pressing the push buttons.

 

This is the computer from the dartboard.

 

There could be a couple of reasons, most likely one of them is that it would have been better to use shielded cable with individual twisted pairs?
Max.

 

Do you mean using twisted pairs of cables cause less resistence? I thought mabye using twisted pairs would cause more resistence. The cable comes twisted since its ethernet cable and rigid copper inside not the flexible stranded type inside.

 

What do you mean by shielded cable?

 

Not for the resistance factor, as I would assume there is minimal current in this application, but shielded cable as its name implies, shields the signal from outside influence, electrical 'noise' and can come in different forms where each pair are shielded by foil or/and the outer sheath has a foil or braid shield also.
Plus if this is going to me moved around, you would never use solid conductor, stranded conductor would be used if you do not want breakage due to flexing.
Max.

 

Thank you very much for your help. I will try what you said hopefully it will do the job.

 

Hello everyone. I am trying to connect an electronic dartboard computer to a switchboard and having problems. When i connect everything together it should work but it doesnt. Its as if all the connections and the distance of all the cables create to mutch resistence the computer goes crazy and gives me errors as if there were a number stuck. Can anyone help please?

Quite a project!

 

How do the original switches work?

Mechanical normally closed contacts?

 

The original swithes are the ones used on most electronic dartboards. Theres 3 layers of plastic when the inner is insulation and the two outer make contact when the dart pushes the plastic fitting.

The project is to use the dartboard computer as a scoreboard hung on the wall. And to control it 4 or 5 meters away with the board with the botons. The problem is that they dont sell scoreboards like this where you hang the screen and control it from somewhere else they are always together in on unit. The other problem is that electronic dartboard with plastic tips are way to noisy for an apartment so thats why i cutted the computer from the dartboard and started this project.

I did it once before with another board and it worked perfectly but i dropped the screen by accident and the screen broke. Ill show the pictures of the other one.

 

This one worked perfectly but the new one is giving me alot of problems.

 

one important problem i can see is the possibility of switch bounce causing counting problems........you may need to add a little bit more electronics to cure it...not a difficult job to do

 

Shielded cable may be hard to do.

An individual twisted pair from each switch might be sufficient.

Not easy if switches are multiplexed but doable.

 

Do you guys think this would work? Adding some electricity to the button board since there are many cables and many soldering joints and since the computer has very little electricity in both ports 1a and 1b?

 

Any question suggesting "adding some electricity" would have to be answered no.

Anything is possible, but guessing and "electricity" can only lead to smoke.

If you are "short of electricity" at the computer, I'm afraid you need buffers.
Very similar to what you suggest, but carefully engineered by someone on here.

Battery source to the switches. Switches to "relay" (open collector, ttl buffer,fet, dry contact) and "contacts" to computer.

Hope that makes sense!

 

This may explain why multiplexing gets complicated fast.

http://pcbheaven.com/wikipages/How_Key_Matrices_Works/

 

Any question suggesting "adding some electricity" would have to be answered no.
:

I respectfully disagree. Adding electricity is exciting, electrifying even.