Welcome New Members!

Hi, I’m Scott. I received my Blinks dev kit a couple weeks ago and am slowly coming up to speed with the environment.

I’m a dev for a mobile game company in SF. I was drawn to Blinks because I love the blend of digital gaming with the physicality of the tiles. A while back there was another tile-based gaming system called Siftables. I did some development for that as a side project. It was fun, but sadly the platform didn’t survive.

With Blinks, it seems my dev kit is different than others I’ve seen talked about around the site. I was given the six production Blinks, the programming rig, and a blank Blink for debugging. No magnetic enclosure to hold the programmer in place. I’m finding it quite cumbersome to hold the pins onto my Blink every time I want to program it.

It is also cumbersome to teach the sketch to my group of six other Blinks when I want to test en masse. This involves reinserting the battery in the blank, flipping it over, connecting it to the hive and programming the others. This debug cycle is long and I hope to discover some way to streamline this. Anyone have clever solutions?

An ideal solution for me would be a rig that securely holds the blank with the programming pins against the contacts, but does so with the tile face up so that I can program the other tiles without having to do the battery/flip thing. (I’m reminded of @Brett’s GDC talk about tools to remove pain points :+1:)

I’ve also been challenged by the inconsistent, or missing documentation. For instance, datagrams are referenced a couple places, but are not in the API Docs nor the Glossary. Thankfully this post describes them, and looking through the Darkball source code gives me enough information to use them.

I have also seen mention of using the serial port to print debug output, but haven’t seen a post describing exactly the hardware required to do so. I think part of the problem is that I’m new to Arduino in general.

Anyway, I’m excited to get to work on something! I plan to focus on single-player experiences. I have a couple ideas for games, but just today I struck on an idea that I really want to build. Excited!

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Welcome Scott!

Thanks for these great comments, I can answer a few quickly

The original dev Blinks from 2018 were an early design of the hardware designed only for developers. There are pros and cons to the old and the new, but the goal with the new is that developer Blinks and consumer Blinks should simply be the same thing.

Do you think a 3D printed Jig would do the trick here? I’ve been wanting to introduce something like this, but want to also make them in low volume at first while we iterate and get it right.

We’re putting team effort on the dev documentation this week. Would love to connect with you and get your feedback/help in bringing our documentation back up to speed. There has been some evolution in hardware and the API since we launched. (datagrams were a relatively new addition, and I believe there will be a couple more minor API additions as well this year)

Going back to my first comment of pros/cons, at the moment, only the 2018 dev Blinks have a serial out connector, but a few weeks ago, I validated our latest prototypes and we’ll have Blinks this year that have that capability as well. I’ll be sure to let you know when that is available and will make sure that is easily accessible to devs in the forum that want that feature.

Looking forward to having you in the forum and play testing your games :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the clarifications, Jon.

Yes, that is what I was thinking, but I’m unsure how to do this while keeping the blank Blink at desk level so it’s easy to attach the others for sketch sharing. Maybe the jig/blank would attach to the edge of a desk and hang off the edge with the programming dongle dangling underneath? Or prop the blank vertically and the others can be attached up and out for sketch sharing.

Hi,

my name is Carsten 48 and from Germany - my DevKit is on the way. I want do develop my own games but I have no skills in development so it is verry hard for me at the moment to understand all the Tutorials and to go on - so any help is welcome :slight_smile:

Greetings

Carsten

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Hi Carsten, welcome to the forum! We are always working on new and updated materials, so keep an eye out for that. If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to send me a direct message on here and I should be able to answer.

Hi Everyone,

I’m also a coding noob, but this time, I have a different question.

5 of the 6 blank blinks, (other 6 not tested, these are the ones I’m using to test my baby-steps code/upload new games on), I just received on Saturday 5/2 and have barely been on, using the battery, for no more than a few minutes are giving me the low battery indicator. Darn annoying red blinky light! I read some Articles about some updated stuffs, but I’m not sure if those are related to the battery indicator. I don’t have a battery tester, so I can’t confirm the battery’s power. It just seems odd that so many would be bad when shipped.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Dawn

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Hi @WillowDreamer, if you are getting 2 red flashes, that is low battery (which would be surprising) if you are you getting 3 red flashes, it is a failed transmission, ie just need to push the button and it reverts to the game it knows. Let me know :slight_smile:

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Hi @jbobrow,

Nice to chat with you again. I went to do a video of what’s happening, and of course, now it’s not happening. Which indicates to me that it was likely a communication issue.

When/if it happens again, I’ll pay attention to the number of flashes to see which indicator it is. You’d think I would have known this, but NOPE, I didn’t. So, please disregard for now.

Thanks a ton for your response!
Dawn

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Hey everyone,

My name is Brian and I picked up a single Blank dev kit from the first Kickstarter. I just started diving into some Arduino dev work last night. Surprisingly, I got the blinks to all do what I wanted them to first try, so I assume it will always be this easy :stuck_out_tongue: jk … I hate that I JUST unlearned semicolons with Kotlin, fml.

Anyway, I’m from Michigan, born and raised…got my computer science degree at U of M, hence my love of development. I’m a professional Android developer of about…10 years now? Most of my programming has been on mobile, but I’ve done a little bit with embedded systems (Ford SYNC, Raspberry Pi), too, so this should be fun.

More importantly, I love board games. My favorite board games now are probably King of Tokyo, Zombie 15’, and classics like RISK and Axis & Allies. I also like the Arkham Horror LCG. It’s more of a card game, but it’s played like a board game, too.

I also play on the professional foosball tour whenever we are allowed to gather in groups :’( I miss it.

That’s about it for me.

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Hello All,

My name is Wes, I am a Web Application Developer by day (PHP/Laravel/MySQL), and I live and work in the suburban Boston area.

I am looking forward to interfacing Blinks with other Arduino/Raspberry Pi hardware… thinking about communicating out from Arduino (via IR LED) into 1 or more Blinks (running Zen Flow for example) to create a customizable IOT display. Could use as a Clock, Incoming Email/Tweet Indicator, COVID Count display for my County or Town… That sort of thing. I am starting small, by simply attempting to communicate “in” to a cluster of Blinks.

I am beginning to search around this Forum to see what else everyone else has accomplished with external connections.

I just received the Core and Expansion sets yesterday and have backed the current KickStarter that just met its funding goal this morning! Awesome!!

Thanks for having me.
.w.e.s

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Hi Wes,

Welcome! Good luck!

Be Well,

Dawn

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Hi Wes,

Firstly let me welcome you to the Blinks Community and by the sounds of things it looks like you have big plans for your blinks, good luck with that and please keep us informed of your progress :slight_smile:.

Stay safe,
Lee

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Hi everyone, I’m Ricky. It was fun catching up with your stories and interesting to hear what is drawing folks to Blinks. I’m a software engineer, board game designer, and YouTuber… Blinks was checking 2 out of 3 of those boxes, so I put it right with a video demo of Blinks on my channel, so now all three boxes ticked! :sunglasses:: https://youtu.be/FIpgiVeNhwI

My first “big” board-game design Renegade (a solo/co-op puzzle-solving sandbox deck building game), has players taking on the identity of hackers (or “Renegades”), trying to bring down a super-massive-computer network using clever card play and careful positioning of contaminants. Renegade’s neon colours and fixation with hexes, echo the cosmetics of Blinks, and the idea of inviting players into the workings of Blinks, making them free thinkers in its design space, has parallels with the sandbox mechanisms of Renegade. I was always going to be drawn in as soon as I discovered Move38… :star_struck:

I’m a Brit who loves board games, maths, nature’s wonders, all sports with baseball at number one… I know, a Brit that loves - and plays (well, "played’) might I add - baseball… KC Royals fan and utility infielder and pr-retirement-chairman for a regional team here in England… and owned by my lhaso-poo dog Dixie ( I was going to say “dog owner”, but really it’s him who has me owned :crazy_face: )

Looking forward to sharing ideas and playing with the new toy…

Stay safe! Ricky.

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Hello!

I’m Rob Canciello and I’ll be a Game Design intern this Summer for Move38.
I’m a freelance game designer/developer/producer and I founded my own studio (https://stuido.co/) back in 2017. My interests include board games, asymmetrical gameplay, couch co-op, AR/VR/XR, and of course video games.

Thinking of Blinks as digital interactive board game components satisfies my love of digital games and board games, and I’m interested in leveraging that unique aspect in my designs. I have much to learn about this, but I’m looking forward to it!

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Hello! My name is Jacob and I’m a Game Design Intern at Move38 this summer.

I’m a toy designer, puppeteer, and playmaker who’s been having a blast learning how these amazing Blinks work and getting to work on new content for the platform. Happy to chat games, design, 3D printing, theme park trivia, and help in any way I can!

I believe systems play is the future of play, and I’m excited to build that future with y’all.

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Hey there!

I’m Nicole Polidore and I am a Game Design intern for this summer here at Move38!

I’m a rising senior at Parsons School of Design in NYC majoring in Game Design.
I have mainly worked in Unity for my games and became very interested in narrative driven video games and has experimented in creating AR/VR to simple 2D games.
Along with game design, I am an illustrator and designer working on logos and small commissions.
My Portfolio

Blinks is a unique and innovative game system that has captivated me from the start so I am very excited to be working with Move38.

It’s nice to meet all of you!! :slight_smile:

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Howdy!

I’m Connor Wolf! This summer I’m a Game Design intern!

I go to Bradley University in Peoria, IL, and I’m studying Game Design and CS. I love games because they bring people together, and I hope my time here at Move38 can work to do that!

Ready to get Blinkin’

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Hello Everyone! The vibes from the live streams and this community are infectious!

I’m Alfred, and I’m a professional software engineer (Stevens Tech '06) and an amateur game designer (many stalled Unity projects :sweat_smile:) from northern NJ! I made my first post last night about the game that I’m working on. I don’t even have my Blinks, yet, but I’m so pumped that I couldn’t wait to post about it! :smiley: I’d be happy to receive any / all input and talk about it there.

Cheers!

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Hey Yall. just wanted to introduce myself and can’t wait to be able to try to develop on thie blinks system

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Hi there! It’s been awhile since I worked on this kind of thing - I used to work in the Craft Techonology lab at CU Boulder about a decade ago. I was so excited to find Blinks - they are such a cool system and platform for game and interactive art design. I’m looking forward to playing with these; so far I’ve got some pretty changing color lights going after one night getting things up and running.

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