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By BSjohnson
#249636
Glad to see this project moving along again, guys! Keep up the good work! No rush, though. We've been waiting 26 years for this. A few more weeks isn't going to hurt us.
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By GAVAL
#250227
Just bumped into this thread.

Matt Burke and Company make dreams come true! I wonder how this'll compare to the new Mass Produced PKE's?

Looks much nicer so far! And for not much more cash...

G
User avatar
By jackdoud
#250232
The bad news: The test boards that were made seem to have the switches wired wrong. Burkit and I were looking at our copies and found the error. TJ was going off of Burkit's handdrawn schematics and didn't build a prototype before designing the boards.

The good news: This can be bypassed relatively easily to restore functionality and TJ was planning on redesigning the boards to shrink them a bit more anyway.

It'll still be a week or two before any of us will have pictures of a functional board to post but we're still moving on this project.
By Gareee
#250259
Will that company that did the board refund you guys, or at least do proper board for you to replace the ones they did incorrectly?
User avatar
By jackdoud
#250279
Gareee wrote:Will that company that did the board refund you guys, or at least do proper board for you to replace the ones they did incorrectly?
The boards were made exactly as designed, the problem is the design itself was wrong.
By Gareee
#250500
Aw crap. Sorry to hear that. At least you found a bypass for the error.
By joepenora
#251240
This post may contain an affiliate link that helps support GBFans.com when you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

Hi guys,

I just got my iona shoe polisher I won on ebay.....quick question.
for what I’m building this for, it doesn’t have to be movie accurate, in the video clip...the face of the pke, probably won't even be seen. (I’m spoofing the scene in Ghostbusters where egon waves the pke meter over the guy in the hallway of the hotel and pokes him.)

Could I put a but on the front where the user would press it with their thumb, and the longer they press it the higher the wings raise and lights blink?


Thanks again for all your hard work!!
User avatar
By jackdoud
#251250
joepenora wrote:Could I put a but on the front where the user would press it with their thumb, and the longer they press it the higher the wings raise and lights blink?
...umm, yes? :whatever:

You can do whatever you want, what does this have to do with the thread?
By Qantravon
#258330
Hey guys. It's been a while and I was wondering if you had any progress updates on this. I've hit a point in the construction of my PKE where I don't want to go any farther without the electronics.
User avatar
By AJ Quick
#258420
jackdoud wrote:The boards were made exactly as designed, the problem is the design itself was wrong.
I made that same mistake a few years ago.

Quickly designed a board that I thought would be awesome, and then it turned out I had wired everything in parallel instead of series. I had like 50 useless boards.
User avatar
By BSjohnson
#258427
AJ Quick wrote:
jackdoud wrote:The boards were made exactly as designed, the problem is the design itself was wrong.
I made that same mistake a few years ago.

Quickly designed a board that I thought would be awesome, and then it turned out I had wired everything in parallel instead of series. I had like 50 useless boards.
Ouch.
By Qantravon
#266143
I hate to be the one bring this up again, but I was kind of hoping to be able to have my PKE finished by Halloween. Any idea when we'll have the schematics and parts list for this ready?
#266597
Quick update:

Brainstormed with mburkit some more, and found a few more spots we can improve things on. The goal is to keep the whole shebang under 100 bucks, which is on the high end of things.
By Qantravon
#266612
That is excellent news. I, for one, really appreciate you guys taking the time to make this thing work well and be inexpensive. Even if I have seemed a little impatient :p
#266636
Qantravon wrote:That is excellent news. I, for one, really appreciate you guys taking the time to make this thing work well and be inexpensive. Even if I have seemed a little impatient :p

Yeah, Matt and I live about an hour away from each other and both are getting busier these days, and Dragoncon interrupted what free time we had. The first run of test boards we did showed some stuff we can update to make the boards smaller, easier to wire, and just be more user friendly. Plus, one of the Arduinos we got had the old OS on it, so that was a PITA.

Soon though, unless I move again (which Ron wants)
#275369
Even with the Matty coming out in a couple months (and we all know how I feel about it), Matt and I still want to finish this up for the community. I'm moving back to Ron's turf this week, but should be back up and running, fixing design issues in a week or two.

Our new layout uses a board slightly larger than a 9V, and our screen should be the correct size/shape, as the current PKE screens available are too tall.
User avatar
By pchrisbosh1
#275424
ChapterMasterTu'Shan wrote:Even with the Matty coming out in a couple months (and we all know how I feel about it), Matt and I still want to finish this up for the community. I'm moving back to Ron's turf this week, but should be back up and running, fixing design issues in a week or two.

Our new layout uses a board slightly larger than a 9V, and our screen should be the correct size/shape, as the current PKE screens available are too tall.


Good to know this is still in production TJ. I've been looking forward to this kit for awhile now. Matty PKE or not, I'm still interested in getting one.
By Polly
#4899275
mburkit wrote:As of right now, this is kind of a dead project. I am way too busy with working full time and being a full time grad student to mess with this right now. I may revisit it in the future, but right now, I simply do not have the time.
Since the matty pke's haven't been available for quite some time have you thought about starting this project up again
User avatar
By AfterShock
#4899649
mburkit wrote:As of right now, this is kind of a dead project. I am way too busy with working full time and being a full time grad student to mess with this right now. I may revisit it in the future, but right now, I simply do not have the time.
I managed to get my hands on one of the Iona Shoe Polishers and was planning to do my own build of a PKE Meter. I was wondering if you would be willing to share the Arduino code you used to make it all work? I am in the process of learning Arduino because I figured it would work well for this type of application. :cool:

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