First i have made a layout on how i want my toys connected and driven from the Arduino. It looks like this at the moment:
As you can see i am planning on 4 groups of 595's that are driven separate. one reason for that is ease of use and driving, the other speed.
I have made a test setup today with 3 groups of 595's, 1 group of 4, 1 group of 2 and a single one.
The writing of data to the 3 groups gets done in about 1600 microseconds (yes, micro) and i think the driving of all 4 groups will be around the 2 miliseconds in the end. I think that will be more then enought to handle all things. There is going to be some more cycles of the Arduino needed to handle the input and selecting the needed ports but i think we will be safe with that.
After that i designed and orderer some pcb's for the 595 multiplexers. There are going to be 4 595 on the pcb that can be driven separate or in line and even can be connected to a next 595 board. 1 board can drive up to 32 outputs to the driver boards.
This is the board:
While i wait on the pcb's to arrive i will try to code the Arduino for further testing and setup 1 table to use all the events i am planning to build.
One thing i would really like, is on startup to fire a pattern of solenoids like when a real table gets started
And offcourse there need to be some animation with my backbox and the flashers.So little time, so much fun...
