It might seem like electronic games and tabletop games are somewhat at odds. But there are always places where the lines are cleverly blurred as with this stat tracker beautifully constructed from a sandwich of circuit boards.
The nature of role playing games is one of deep imagination, putting yourself in the shoes of the player your are building though out a campaign. But of course the game board and pieces are there to keep track of all the data that your imagination just can’t. This can be done with a character card and some markers, a pad of paper, or a spreadsheet on your laptop. But to keep his mind in the world of Hyper Light Drifter, [Albert Phan] built this stat tracker that lives up to the aesthetic of the game.
The stackup of three PCBs does a brilliant job here, using cutouts on either end of the faceplate as a flexible tab that you press to actuate the surface mount button on the bottom PCB. The third PCB act as a spacer, not just for the six low-profile buttons, but also for the 40 LEDs that display status. That spacer has holes cut out for each light, providing isolation, with the FR4 substrate of the top plate acting as a diffuser.
It looks spectacular, it saves state between uses, and can be recharged via USB. But what’s that you say? You don’t play Hyper Light Drifter? Just respin the top PCB (and we suppose you’d need to tweak firmware as well) and you can swap it out for your game of choice.
Thank you so much for featuring my project! I really love how nice the art and pcb construction came out. My board has 46 LEDs in total. 45 for health energy and dash points and 1 battery icon that is part of the art! You could totally spin another top board with different art if you wanted (no firmware change needed if keeping the same amount LEDs). I’m thinking of having the design files open sourced if there’s enough interest. I’m working on having a kickstarter as a way of gauging interest if anyone wanted one of these stat trackers in the coming weeks. Follow the project as I’ll post updates there.
I looooooveee this project. The style, the pcb shenanigans … everything. Keep up the good work Mr Phan!
Thank you for the kind words : )
this looks amazing! and i wanna know what song is playing in that vid. would be fun to work with that on the background.
I think it was this chillwave mix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arzw0tFK5O4