darkSpyro

Question. So my wife and I were humored when we realized how the NFC-enabled back of her Nexus 7 makes LightCore/Giants light up when their bases are placed against it. This got me thinking: is there a way to get some sort of NFC pad? You could then wire it into a display unit and, with the flick of a switch, have all LightCore and Giant characters light up!

This sounds interesting... and I have a Nexus 7... with a broken speaker... that I could fix... if I felt like it... wait a minute... how was that even relevant?...

That would be AWESOME! But I have no idea how to make that happen. :/

no clue.... when i saw NFC my mind went immediately to football.... lol I'm sure it's possible but I'm no electrician!!

We had a whole thread dedicated to figuring out a way to get them to light up without the portal... Came across someone who managed the other way around, wiring a light to light up when placed on a portal.

One thing we determined... You know how the rim of the portals rise higher than the surface? Inside that rim is a ring of copper wire. It seems that copper wire is the antenna for all this. Using more copper wire you can extend the range of the antenna (my problem is where to get copper wire and how to know its copper, LOL!). This is why if you put an unpowered/off portal next to your active portal, the other portal works to light up and read the figures. I managed to have SOME success with laying a wire hanger over the portal, at certain points of the hanger I could get the Lightcore figures to light up and read. We haven't been able to get any real information on how it works. We narrowed down the kind of RFID chip in the figures, but it seems likely that has little to do with how the lights light up. Still, it could be designed to be triggered by the same frequency that reads the chip, so who knows?

So what's NFC, is that a brand? If so, I've never heard of it...

Here's the other thread: //forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/viewposts.php?topic=73090

I can fit 5 LCs or 3 Giants on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. So in effect, it's kinda like an NFC pad...

But I thought the light-up battle arena did this anyway.

Quote: niceguy1

It seems that copper wire is the antenna for all this. ... This is why if you put an unpowered/off portal next to your active portal, the other portal works to light up and read the figures.

The copper wire is creating a magnetic field. I would guess that as long as you can create a magnetic field of similar intensity, then they should light up. I will run a few tests to confirm this theory, but my physics background says this is it. (I have not read the thread niceguy1 linked to.)

Quote: dios

Quote: niceguy1

It seems that copper wire is the antenna for all this. ... This is why if you put an unpowered/off portal next to your active portal, the other portal works to light up and read the figures.

The copper wire is creating a magnetic field. I would guess that as long as you can create a magnetic field of similar intensity, then they should light up. I will run a few tests to confirm this theory, but my physics background says this is it. (I have not read the thread niceguy1 linked to.)

The copper conductivity is exactly how the Light-up Battle Arena works. So in theory, you could build your own at a much reduced (retail $69.95AU) price. Building one that looks good, and holds the amount of figures you want is the tricky part. Also, I believe the lights would glow dimmer the more Skylanders you add (I'm not sure how many though).

I was under the impression the Battle Arena did NOT activate the Lights inside the Skylanders.
I'm 99% certain it dos not have any RF Tech what so ever

It would be easy to make them light up without the portal.

A ring of wire and a simple oscillator circuit would power them up!

I've been playing with RFID stuff for a while and I am using cheap chinese read/writers costing around $20 or less. With these I can choose to power the figure or not, and thus flash the light at will.

My goal is to make a standalone "stat viewer" that shows the figures name, experience, money, challenges etc without the game running. I am well on my way to getting it working.

If there is interest in a simple "light up" platform I will try and get a circuit diagram sorted and post here. Let me know.

I think it would be cool to have shelves with this built in. That way you can have all your display figures light up. Maybe even a switch to turn it on and off.

It's as simple as a wire coil and a 13.56 mghz oscillator.
You can buy a ready made oscillator module for <£10 of the right type or make one with a crystal a couple of passive components and a 74hc04 chip.

Quote: Pyrofer

If there is interest in a simple "light up" platform I will try and get a circuit diagram sorted and post here. Let me know.

Ummmm, considering that we had an entire thread DEVOTED to the concept of making a display shelf/platform that lights up the figures, YES there's interest! LOL! I myself have a degree in electronics design, but I didn't know where to start to figure out how to trigger the lights. I thought it possible that they were triggered by the RFID signal, but I wasn't sure and have no access to an RFID reader (other than the portal, that is) in order to check.

Quote: johnsonsteven86

I think it would be cool to have shelves with this built in. That way you can have all your display figures light up. Maybe even a switch to turn it on and off.

That's what I figured, building it into a shelf to make the whole shelf trigger any lights on it.

Quote: Pyrofer

It's as simple as a wire coil and a 13.56 mghz oscillator.
You can buy a ready made oscillator module for <£10 of the right type or make one with a crystal a couple of passive components and a 74hc04 chip.

Noted! Thanks for the tip. What kind of ready-made oscillator module do you know of? Would it be pre-set to 13.56 MHz, or would it have settings? It's been years since I've browsed an electronics store...

Sadly it seems most are Surface mount these days, but something like this,
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TXC-...Z-/350759508182

Hooked up to the wire coil should do it.

It's probably better to go for a crystal and logic chip though as both of those can be got cheaper and in easy DIP packages with long pins to solder.
The circuit for making the oscillator from crystal is very common,
http://www.z80.info/gfx/series.gif
and the 13.56mghz crystals are common and cheap, as are the 74 logic chips.

Simply being in an active RF field is enough to light up the figures.
Take one with you and try it on public transport tag readers it should light up/flash as the reader tries to find a valid travel card.

I can also light mine up on the door scanners and printer scanners at work.

Oh, geez, now I HAVE to bring a Skylander onto the public transport system, LMAO!

Thanks for the info, this should be everything I need, even with my electronics knowledge being rather rusty,

Quote: niceguy1

We had a whole thread dedicated to figuring out a way to get them to light up without the portal... Came across someone who managed the other way around, wiring a light to light up when placed on a portal.

One thing we determined... You know how the rim of the portals rise higher than the surface? Inside that rim is a ring of copper wire. It seems that copper wire is the antenna for all this. Using more copper wire you can extend the range of the antenna (my problem is where to get copper wire and how to know its copper, LOL!). This is why if you put an unpowered/off portal next to your active portal, the other portal works to light up and read the figures. I managed to have SOME success with laying a wire hanger over the portal, at certain points of the hanger I could get the Lightcore figures to light up and read. We haven't been able to get any real information on how it works. We narrowed down the kind of RFID chip in the figures, but it seems likely that has little to do with how the lights light up. Still, it could be designed to be triggered by the same frequency that reads the chip, so who knows?

So what's NFC, is that a brand? If so, I've never heard of it...

Here's the other thread: //forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/viewposts.php?topic=73090

NFC stands for Near Field Communication my kind sir...

it's got nothing to do with the rfid chips. you just need a copper antenna and a resistor to get the portal to light an led ...

http://s1212.beta.photobucket....amagic.mp4.html

original link information i used http://www.creative-science.or...LED_simple.html

Copper antenna and resistor+led to RECEIVE the power.

They are talking about the emitor. That is a little more complex.

Again, we aren't talking about getting the portal to light an LED, we're talking about getting anything else to light a Skylander.

i believe he is just trying to show you that its not powered by the rfid its just a transfer of power to the skylander which lights the led which is inside the skylanders. the problem i would see with this is that the more skylanders you put in the loop the more power draw you will apply to the transmitter or the field thus this could possibly damage the transmitter or like the other post states the less it will light up you would have to find the threshold and then multiply the recievers needed with a switch controlling the entire parallel circuit or a strong enough transmitter to hold the load the other question here is does the transmitter produce any heat especially when multiple skylanders are added to it as you would have to create a platform to prevent the heat from becoming a fire hazard all electronics have a form of heat disipation that occurs and if you made a table of sorts you have to keep that in mind

Obviously for multiple figures you need multiple loops+emitter.
You can put a couple of figures on one loop similar to how the portal fits several, but when you start extending the loop size to many figures you lose power rapidly.
If you bent your loop to be more rectangular you could probably fit 3 figures or 2 giants per loop. I would imagine that would fall within the power budget for most emitters.

It's just an LED so the total power level is quite low, I doubt cooling would be an issue.

With a high power transistor on the loop output you can obviously push more power out. I saw somebody on youtube light a 110v bulb with a wire loop and some AA batteries.

Not sure but I imagine a wiiiiiide rectangular loop for many figures (8?) and a high power transistor on the oscillator output to power the loops should work.

The problem becomes tuning the loops to actually power the figures, trust me on this when I say its degree level math to calculate antennas for this stuff.