Did some testing and troubleshooting and fixing today. The results are encouraging.
I updated my sketch to output the row and column when a hit is detected, and I found out a few interesting things about the issues I reported to myself yesterday.
Firstly, only the red "Server Connection" LED is not working. The yellow and green light up as instructed when a connection is established.
Secondly, all the number wedges were registering hits today, only the second half of the triple ring was not.
So I charted out all the row/column pairs for each hit combination and updated my matrices in the sketch to match. A retest found that all hits were registering correctly, except: the second triple ring remains silent and the 18/19 pair stopped registering.
Glancing at the perfboard and ribbon connector, I quickly found the problem with the triple ring... the 7 outputs from the dartboard start on the second pin. I connected the shift register to pins 1-7 when I should have connected them to pins 2-8. An easy fix, I will just solder in another small wire connecting pin 1 to pin 8... this also explains why the single/double/triple/bull portion of the matrix was off by 1 in every case. Doh!
The 18/19 pair of wedges may be a precarious solder. It is the first pin in the second row of the ribbon connectors, and I was flipping the perfboard over and back to inspect the connections, so it is possible that I have been disturbing this joint in the process. I will de- and resolder this connection, and inspect the other end of the connection at the shift register to see if that may be where the problem actually lies. I can imagine some of these connections breaking when the board is actively pummeled by darts, so I will be sure to generate the proper documentation that details what shift register pins goes to which dartboard ribbon pin, and what row/column and point/multiplier these match -- if one stops registering, I will be able to find the solder joints quickly and easily.
Finally, I will test the connections to the red server connectivity LED and test the LED itself to see why it is not functioning properly. To be honest, I will consider this project a success even if this one LED doesn't work, so put that in your pipe and don't smoke it because smoking is a health risk.
On another front, I downloaded some free circuit board design cad software and created the dartboard circuit. It is a mess. I need to seriously reconsider the layout to optimize the traces because there is so much crossover in this layout. The circuit has some layout restrictions due to the location of the LEDs, the location of the ribbon connector and to some extent the orientation of the boarduino. Unfortunately the software I am using does not appear to have an option to automatically route the copper or optimize the layout. Also unfortunate is that the other free software that does have this option also has restrictions on the board size -which my circuit exceeds.
I will keep looking for other softwares and maybe try to defeat the limitations by trying to export from one into another. Fear ye not, I will surely keep all of you updated on this topic, so there is no need to flood the comments section nor my inbox with all of your complaints. Gee whiz.
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