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PlusCart (an inexpensive DIY WiFi multicart)


Al_Nafuur

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8 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

Is the "Pluscart+" SSID always visible even when the "Start WiFi Manager Portal" is Not active?

 

Have to check this. I will let you once done but I may recall that the SSID was only available after the Manager Portal was activated in the menu.

I'll confirm later.

Edited by repetto74
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2 hours ago, repetto74 said:

Have to check this. I will let you once done but I may recall that the SSID was only available after the Manager Portal was activated in the menu.

I'll confirm later.

If so, the STM32 and the WiFi module can talk to each other and your soldering is (most likely) correct.

 

It might be that the ESP8266 has the wrong firmware, is defect or misconfigured. To check if it is just misconfigured you can use the "Delete WiFi Connections" function in the WiFi menu, this function indeed initiates a factory reset to the ESP8266.

 

After using this function you have to reboot the PlusCart before you try to connect to a WiFi network. I recommend to remove the PlusCart from the 2600 and plugging it back to make sure the ESP8266 really powers down.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Al_Nafuur said:

If so, the STM32 and the WiFi module can talk to each other and your soldering is (most likely) correct.

 

It might be that the ESP8266 has the wrong firmware, is defect or misconfigured. To check if it is just misconfigured you can use the "Delete WiFi Connections" function in the WiFi menu, this function indeed initiates a factory reset to the ESP8266.

 

After using this function you have to reboot the PlusCart before you try to connect to a WiFi network. I recommend to remove the PlusCart from the 2600 and plugging it back to make sure the ESP8266 really powers down.

 

 

Hi Al_Nafuur,

Thanks I will test everything this late evening and get back hopefully with some good news ?

 

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1 hour ago, Al_Nafuur said:

If so, the STM32 and the WiFi module can talk to each other and your soldering is (most likely) correct.

@repetto74

After thinking about it a bit, it only proves that the Tx to Rx line from the STM to the ESP works but not that the connection back from the ESP to the STM works.

 

Does the LED of the ESP8266 blinks shortly if you start a "Scan For WiFi Access Points" ?

 

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6 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

@repetto74

After thinking about it a bit, it only proves that the Tx to Rx line from the STM to the ESP works but not that the connection back from the ESP to the STM works.

 

Does the LED of the ESP8266 blinks shortly if you start a "Scan For WiFi Access Points" ?

 

I recall activity of the blue led blinking a few times. I will confirm this evening once I hook-up everything and test again ?

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8 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

@repetto74

After thinking about it a bit, it only proves that the Tx to Rx line from the STM to the ESP works but not that the connection back from the ESP to the STM works.

 

Does the LED of the ESP8266 blinks shortly if you start a "Scan For WiFi Access Points" ?

 

Yes a short blink more or less 1 second but then I get the "timeout" message.

I have tried a complete reset of the module, disconnected the board and reconnected but no changes when I scan for networks.

The SSID is visible only after enabling it from the "Manager Portal" menu and my PC can connect to it but http://192.168.4.1 will just hang on, no router menu. This module looks completely silent.

I'll check with microscope of any evidence of bad solder joint of components on the module. The board is working and the continuity on the module pins are ok.

Edited by repetto74
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21 minutes ago, repetto74 said:

Yes a short blink more or less 1 second but then I get the "timeout" message.

I have tried a complete reset of the module, disconnected the board and reconnected but no changes when I scan for networks.

The SSID is visible only after enabling it from the "Manager Portal" menu and my PC can connect to it but http://192.168.4.1 will just hang on, no router menu. This module looks completely silent.

So it looks like the STM32 can talk to the ESP8266 but the response line is broken.

 

You might try and solder a wire between these two pins (ESP8266 Tx -> STM32 Rx) or maybe you should first check all soldering related to these two pins.

grafik.thumb.png.3d8d9192763bdd8bfd67bf962824bf1f.png

 

Edited by Al_Nafuur
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1 minute ago, Al_Nafuur said:

So it looks like the STM32 can talk to the ESP8266 but the response line is broken.

 

You might try and solder a wire between these two pins (ESP8266 Tx -> STM32 Rx)

grafik.thumb.png.3d8d9192763bdd8bfd67bf962824bf1f.png

 

OK I'll try and keep you posted tomorrow ?. Not so much time tonight to do this test.

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12 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

So it looks like the STM32 can talk to the ESP8266 but the response line is broken.

 

You might try and solder a wire between these two pins (ESP8266 Tx -> STM32 Rx) or maybe you should first check all soldering related to these two pins.

grafik.thumb.png.3d8d9192763bdd8bfd67bf962824bf1f.png

 

That did the trick! Soldering a jumper wire has solved. I can connect now to the wifi and set-up the Plus Store account. I cannot really explain why there is a broken line here, I have checked the continuity and it looked fine. Bad PCB? Anyway it works that's the most important :-D.

Thank you for your support, this cart is ra really nice piece of hardware :-). Let's put it in a cartridge shell now!

IMG_2386.JPG

Edited by repetto74
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I cannot believe I waited this long to purchase the Pluscart!  Such an amazing project and so well thought out!  Today is my first day playing around with it and I am extremely impressed... Congrats to everyone involved, you are rock stars!  

 

I have so far only played one game and that was the NTSC version of Pac-Man 8k.  I wanted to point out what I think is a minor issue.  When you make it past the second wave, the intermission I believe is supposed to play, but instead in my play test it blanked out for a few seconds (thought it crashed..) but it did come back and let me complete my game.  

 

Thanks again,

 

Glenn

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Hi everyone,

Brand new user here - just received my pluscart and what can I say that hasn't been said before: awesome project! Biggest respect for all contributing folks!

Works perfectly, could play a lot of well remembered games and even more forgotten ones.

Just one problem on my side maybe someone can point me in the right direction:

I have signed up for the plus store, have my Nextcloud space setup - the card is connected, I have the mirrored files on my PC, I can play all online Games, I can also see games I put  in

the "My Roms" folder and play them - so I think the connection is all correct.

When I have no roms in the Offline folder no option to download is shown, when I add some (I put 2x2k roms in there to try) the "Download offline ROMs" gets visible!

But then when I activate this - sometimes the screen flashed a little sometimes not - everytime I get stuck in a blue screen with that turning symbol in endless loop.

I even let it run for 2 hours straight but I guess it shouldn't take that long. I even tried to tar the two files first but no difference (also not sure if tar only or gzip....)

Having offline games obviously is not the most important thing, but I would still like a few just in case I end up in place with no wifi but the need to play like it's 1980....

So any hint appreciated, but that doesn't make the cart any less impressive.

Thanks,

Ralph

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1 hour ago, DKONGsr said:

Hi everyone,

Brand new user here - just received my pluscart and what can I say that hasn't been said before: awesome project! Biggest respect for all contributing folks!

Thank you very much.

 

1 hour ago, DKONGsr said:

When I have no roms in the Offline folder no option to download is shown, when I add some (I put 2x2k roms in there to try) the "Download offline ROMs" gets visible!

But then when I activate this - sometimes the screen flashed a little sometimes not - everytime I get stuck in a blue screen with that turning symbol in endless loop.

I even let it run for 2 hours straight but I guess it shouldn't take that long. I even tried to tar the two files first but no difference (also not sure if tar only or gzip....)

 

There is a bug in the current v1.1.0 firmware, so downloading of "Offline ROMs" only works if the generated tar file has a minimun size of 32 KiB (which means you need at least 8x4K ROMs).

This bug is already fixed in the new v2.0.17 draft version, which will (hopefully) be released soon.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Philsan said:

Would it be possible to add Circus Convoy compatibility to PlusCart/UNOcart?

"Circus Convoy uses SuperBank which was developed by batari"

The goal, I think, is to support every bankswitching scheme in the universe. It's more a matter of available programmer-hours than technical difficulty, I would think. My own priorities are CDFJ first, but I simply haven't gotten around to looking at it yet. But even before that I really think I need to spend some time investigating an interrupt-driven servicing of the bus, rather than polling. That would open up a lot of possibilities, and also make supporting CDFJ/DPC+ easier (in my view) because things could be done, effectively, asynchronously.

Others are way better than me at this part of the coding.

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4 hours ago, Philsan said:

Would it be possible to add Circus Convoy compatibility to PlusCart/UNOcart?

"Circus Convoy uses SuperBank which was developed by batari"

 

1 hour ago, Andrew Davie said:

The goal, I think, is to support every bankswitching scheme in the universe. It's more a matter of available programmer-hours than technical difficulty, I would think. My own priorities are CDFJ first, but I simply haven't gotten around to looking at it yet. But even before that I really think I need to spend some time investigating an interrupt-driven servicing of the bus, rather than polling. That would open up a lot of possibilities, and also make supporting CDFJ/DPC+ easier (in my view) because things could be done, effectively, asynchronously.

Others are way better than me at this part of the coding.

I added SB banking to the PlusCart last year to support Prince of Indiana :

 

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4 hours ago, DKONGsr said:

Hi again,

tried with more roms - 64kiB worth and also a whole bunch ~700 something kiB but same effect, blue screen in endless loop. I checked my firmware is 1.1.0 wifi 1.7.4.0

I even renamed all roms to have only 8.3 chars.

Any other suggestions?

 

The PlusStore API don't generates a new tar file until the last (that has been requested) is delivered. And you can not see this "ROMs.tar" file with the nextcloud client or the web-interface. There have been 6 users stuck in this loop.
I renamed these files to "failed-ROMs.tar", so the API will generate a new one upon the next "Download Offline ROMs" request. And I let nextcloud rescan the Offline folders so the users can see (and delete) the "failed-ROMs.tar" file.
 

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47 minutes ago, eebuckeye said:

Any idea when another batch would be available?

I am nearly out of stock and I am waiting for the delivery of parts I ordered from Aliexpress.

 

The next few days I will assemble and encase the remaining 6 PlusCarts here and offer them in the store.

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2 hours ago, Rick Weis said:

I must be living under a rock, how have I not heard about the very cool project!! Hopefully one day I'll notice they have one in stock! 

 

do you have like a waiting list?

 

There is no waiting list, but you can make a "Stock Notify Request" by pressing this button:

grafik.thumb.png.34f5e10d3257759acd8d939b4899eabe.png

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Today the long awaited parts arrived.
A few I already offer as DIY kit in the store. Most of them will go out tomorrow to my soldering service, so in about 1 to 2 weeks I can offer 45 assembled PCBs with standard cartridges and a few 3D shells.

 

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