What is Empty Epsilon?

Empty Epsilon is an open source multiplayer space bridge simulation (mostly developed at Ultimaker in the evening hours). The core idea is that all players has to cooperate well in order to survive. The skills of crew and its captain are critical.

A physical-client add-on to EmptyEpsilon?

This is an add on that will allow things to happen in the real world while playing the game. When getting hit, you'll see actual flashes from a strobe, when shield are activated a signal light will turn on, when there's signficant damage to the ship's hull, there will be smoke, too.

What does it look like?

See this YouTube video that I made. It will show the strobe flashes and signal light and you may see some smoke.

How does it work?

Ruby code to run a client that will interface with the Empty Epsilon server. It controls an Arduino, which has a shield connected to it, with relays. The relays are connected to power outlets which have equipment connected to them, such as a strobe, smoke machine or rotating signal light. The ruby script will automatically detect the Arduino, even when it gets disconnected or reconnected. It will also scan for a running Empty Epsilon server in common IP ranges, so you don't need to know the IP.

How to build it?

Basic architecture

___________     ___________   ___________    ___________  
|   signal  |   |   strobe  | | smoke     |  | smoke     | 
|   light   |   |   light   | | trigger   |  | power     | 
 -----------     -----------   -----------    -----------  
     |                |             |              |
 ___________     ___________   ___________    ___________  
| Relay 1   |   | Relay 2   | | Relay 3   |  | Relay 4   | 
 -----------     -----------   -----------    -----------  
     |                |             |              |
  _____________________________________________________
 |                                                     |
 |                 Arduino Mega 2560                   |
 |                                                     |
 |                  (running duino)                    |
  -----------------------------------------------------
          |
          |  serial over USB
          |
  ____________________                       ______________
 | physical-client.rb |       http          | EmptyEpsilon |
 |                    |-----lua-script----->|  http server |
 |        ruby        |<----json response---|   enabled    |
 ---------------------                       --------------

Bill of Materials

I've used the following parts:

A signal light with a 12V adapter running on 230V
Power outlets from the hardware store
An Arduino Mega 2650
1.25 mm^2 wire
Relay shield (from seeedstudio)

Steps

Roughly, these were the steps I took to build this project.

Get some enclosures to make sure no 230V is exposed.
Connect the arduino with the relayshield
Figure our which pins to trigger in the relay shield documentation
Program an Arduino the "basic" with the IDE, let it respond to serial chars
Send those chars manually
Write a little client in ruby
Figure out that there's a gem called duino which makes reprogramming the arduino everytime obsolete, just work from ruby to develop all functionality.
Connect the 4 relays to 3 power outlets. One is used to control a switch of the smoke system.

Caveats (read BEFORE YOU START)

IMPORTANT: You must have knowledge of how to work with 230V and make a safe circuit
Probably best to see if you can get the software running before you spend lots of money on hardware
Check pin settings in settings.yml to make sure to turn on the correct relay for the functions you want! Your setup may be connected differently
Enabled the httpserver for the PC running as EmptyEpsilon server by adding httpserver=80 to the options.ini
Upload the duino firmware (of the duino ruby gem, which basically makes the Arduino a slave to be controlled by the ruby code.

How to upload the duino firmware to the Arduino:

For info about dino: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/projects/arduino/introducing_arduino.html

install inotool (found at: http://inotool.org/ )
Run in a terminal:

cd du
ino build  -m mega2560
ino upload -m mega2560

...
profit!

Install software dependencies

sudo apt-get install ruby-dev
sudo gem install bundler
bundle

Ensure your user account has access to the USB port:

```sudo adduser whoami dialout``
sudo reboot

Running the physical-client

Starting the client is easy: ruby physical-client.rb

For testing purposes you can use fake_server.rb. It will pretend to be an Empty Epsilon server which pretends to have a ship that is getting hit occasionally, until it is destroyed.

Dependencies

You need at least a working ruby binary.
inotool
Several dependencies that I'm forgetting which I have installed.

License

This ia free software. The code is licensed GPLv3. It comes with no warranty and I don't claim fitness for any purpose (other than to have a bit of fun and learn something).

ErikDeBruijn/epsilon-phys-client