Hogwarts Wand FAQ
- Q: Why is this page so incomplete?
A: I added some stuff this weekend, but it is still incomplete. For details of how the software works and how the wand case was created check back in a few years.
- Q: What is this all about?
A: Check out the Hogwarts and the Draconian Prophecy website for info on the game in which the wand was used.
- Q: Who worked on the wand?
A:This list is incomplete:
- Concept: Acorn Pooley
- Ideas and support: everyone on GC
- Electronics design: Acorn Pooley
- Software: Acorn Pooley
- Case design: Curtis Chen
- Data wrangling: Curtis Chen, DeeAnn Sole, Acorn Pooley
- Electronics construction & soldering: Cary Roberts, Anna Hentzel, Crissy Gugler, Acorn Pooley, ...
- Case construction: Acorn Pooley
- Painting: Crissy Gugler, Lisa Long, ...
- Testing: Acorn Pooley, Sean Gugler, Curtis Chen, DeeAnn Sole, and many others
- Q: How long did the wand take to develop?
A: Acorn has been working on the wand since january 2006. The 17th wand was completed Saturday morning Sept 9, 2006 at 5:30am.
- Q: What came first, the idea to have a Hogwarts game or the idea of the wand?
A: The Snout group decided to run a Hogwarts and/or a wizard game in late 2005. After that Acorn came up with the idea of the wand. It is partly based on prior ideas of the DRUID and the Bat Blinker from the Justice Unlimited game.
- Q: What are mwanemes and how do they encode spells?
A:See the Spell Casting Guide from the book. Note that the online version is an older version than the one in your printed book. You can also refer to the server/mwanemes.txt file for the letters I used internally to represent each mwaneme.
- Q: How does the wand work?
A: Check back in about a week (sept/18/2006). I'll be adding more stuff after I get some sleep :). In the meantime the sourcecode for the wand is available on this website. It is assembly code for a Microchip Pic 18LF2620 microcontroller. The accelerometer used to sense motion is a Freescale MMA6231Q 2-axis 10-g acceleration sensor. The circuit and circuit board layout will be posted here soon. The program consists of 15729 lines of hand-coded PIC 18LF2620 assembly program plus many thousands of lines of data files and supporting c code running on the host laptop.
- Q: How can I get a wand?
A: I am considering offering a kit. The kit will require soldering. If you would like a kit please Contact Acorn and let me know that you would be interested in a kit. The kit will probably cost around $30.00 depending on how many people want one. The kit will not include the case since the case is permanently molded around the electronics.
- Q: How long will the batteries last?
A: I do not know. It will partly depend on how much the wand is used. The wand uses 3 alkaline AA batteries. For longer life leave the wand in a location where it will not be moved a lot. I expect the batteries to last at least a few weeks, but they may last a year or longer.
- Q: How can I change the batteries?
A: Changing the batteries will involve sawing your wand in half. I will post more details later.
- Q: Are there any special features or easter eggs in the wand?
A: Try casting 'hello' or 'cheese' for a list of extra spells. If you cast 'twinkle twinkle little star' then the wand will tell you what time it thinks it is in hexidecimal hours:minutes:quarter-seconds since midnight friday morning. Hours are clamped to 127. Also see the complete list of waving spells below.
- Q: Can I compile the code for the wand myself?
A: The wand was developed on a x86 laptop running linux. I used the gputils tools for assembling the pic code and the picstart plus from Microchip for placing the bootloader (kernel.asm) onto the pic. Thereafter the pic was programmed using the serial port and the kernel.asm bootloader which I wrote (see below for sourcecode). I will provide a 'tar' file of all the sourcecode and makefiles (etc) needed to re-build the bootloader and wand, as well as to build the program that can be used to talk to the wand using a serial port. More details will be provided in the next week or so.
- Q: Can I hack my wand?
A: The wand is pretty easy to hack. Here is some info that may help you:
- The easiest way to hack the wand is to uncover the programming port. It is covered in plastic and hot melt glue, so that will not be too easy, but it can be done. It is pretty obvious where the hole is: on top of the wand at about the midpoint in the "ugly" spot.
- If you hold your wand by the handle with the tip pointing up and the "glowing gems" pointing at you then the programming connector is a 6 pin connector with pin 1, 2, 3 from left to right across the top and pin 4, 5, 6 from left to right across the bottom.
- pin 1 is rx (serial receive - from the serial cable into the wand)
- pin 2 is ground
- pin 3 is 4.5 volts (not needed for programming)
- pin 4 is tx (serial transmit - from the wand out to the cable)
- pin 5 is ground (connected to pin 2)
- pin 6 is 4.5 volts (connected to pin 3) (not needed for programming)
- Be careful not to short between ground and 4.5 volts! This is easy to do by accident if cutting plastic away from the connector with a metal knife.
- To connect a serial port you will need to connect to the tx, rx, and ground pins. Because of the plastic and hot glue the easiest way to do this is probably to (temporarily) solder 3 wires to the upper left, lower left, and one of the middle pins (rx, tx, and ground).
- The signalling is RS232 8N1.5 (8 bit data, no parity, 1.5 stop bits) at
9600 baud. It is 0-5v signalling, so you will need a MAX232 chip (or
equivalent) circuit to connect to a standard +/-12 volt RS232 port like the
ones on a PC. The circuit I used is on
page 7 of the max232 datasheet.
- If your PC only has USB ports you can buy a serial dongle for around $30 which plugs into the USB port and acts like a serial port.
- If you have trouble talking to your wand try adding a delay (up to 1 sec) after each character. Usually this is not necessary.
- Once hooked up send an ASCII H character (uppercase h) followed by a carriage return. This will halt the wand program. Then send a ? character (question mark) followed by a carriage return to get a list of available commands. To re-start your wand send a D character followed by a carriage return.
- Do not send the R command. It will probably work, but it is harder to halt the wand and yu need the password. The password is "beefb055".
- all commands end with a carriage return.
- It is pretty safe to try the various reset commands.
- The read commands are pretty safe. They consist of an uppercase command character followed by 4 lower-case hex digits. To read more send more carriage returns after the wand replies.
- The write commands are use-at-your-own risk! You can do things that will put the wand into a state from which it can never recover. For variable and eeprom write use the same command as a read, followed by a colon and the data to write. For writing flash the address must be 64 byte aligned and you must supply 64 space separated hex bytes following the colon.
- While the wand is in halt mode the clock continues to run. However if you reset your wand it may lose up to 1 minute of time on the clock.
- Fancier hacking is easier if you have the sourcecode. Download it here:
This file Copyright (C) 2006 by Nathan (Acorn) Pooley
Go to TOP Wand page
Go to Acorn's personal webpage
Go to Hogwarts website: www.gotohogwarts.com
Snout: www.snout.org/game
Gadgets of Justice Unlimited
File created by do_doc at Mon Sep 11 11:55:48 PDT 2006