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GMLight expansion packs and addons for the Kick starter

We are preparing to run a Kick starter campaign for GMLight Flavour packs: Add ons to GMLight  specific to the various gaming systems. The surveys we’ve conduct have shown that D&D 5e is the most popular FRPG played today. D&D 5e is published under the open game license OGL which  means that legal requirements for publishing works which make use of its intellectual property is contained and defined in this license. Other FRPGs that fall under the OGL are D&D3.5, D&D4e,Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder and Basic Fantasy RPG.  The intention is to run Kick Starters for generating flavour packs for each of these FRPGs. D&D4e does not appear to have a strong following and so will be omitted from the proposed kick starter list.

 

Contents:

  • 90 Double Sided monster cards (up to 180 Monsters) Each with a drawing of the monster below its textual description
  • DM Screen for tailored to the FRPG
  • Sheet of peel-able Condition Stickers for Conditions in the RPG
  • Set of Initiative clippons to run a round

If you have any good ideas how we can add more value please answer in the comments

 

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What size House Battery

So I need an idea of the size of House Battery to get.  To Store the excess solar energy from our solar panels.

 

Well the CUMonitor plus the tel-tec web calculator lets you model the problem so you can try out different house battery capacities at the different times of the year. see example logging data here.

If you are interested in joining the CUMonitor user group fill out the form here. Note you will have to purchase a CUMonitor box to log your house it you want to take part as a member

The Battery size is entered at the top of the page and the first (light green) bar chart is of the Power remaining in the Battery and the second is the Power from the solar panels. The Assumption is made that the 24 hr period starts with the Battery full.

Some CU Meters have an LED that illuminates when the Meter is exporting the to Grid CUMonitor can optionally monitor this or use an internally calculated flow,

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Dice Roller Speaks

A request on our Facebook page lead to the development of Dice Roller Speaks.

Dice Roller Speaks was created to make Fantasy  role playing games more inclusive. Produced with the visually impaired in mind this App allows Dungeons and Dragons players and other Fantasy Role playing games to roll Dice with a vocal output.

This app is free and on the Google play store

  • The Left hand column is the number of Dice to be rolled (spoken)
  • The Dice Picture column Rolls the dice and speak the Result
  • The Up arrow increases the count of dice rolled
  • the Down arrow decreases the count of dice rolled
  • The + symbol rolls with advantage
  • the – symbol rolls with disadvantage
  • the GMLight Dice Symbol at top and bottom repeats the Voice of the last roll

Thanks to Colaborators

With thanks for Optician advice to Peter Croucher

Special thanks to Thomas Croucher for the Voice Over

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Consumer Release of Web RD

Web RD is now ready for release. The consumer version is a kit just to build the display

The MAX7219 component comes with a edge connector and a connecting cable

This edge connector needs to be soldered onto the Web Rd  Module to connect the components

The ESP8266 01S Programmed for Niche-tec Web Connect is supplied preprogrammed with test software that displays a test pattern on the Dot Matrix display and is ready to connect to your LAN using one of the Free Web RD software packages available on the play store.

ESP8266 ESP01S

Assembling these three components will create the Consumer Web RD Display

Web RD   or Web Remote Display  is a stand alone display unit that has the ability to get data from the internet (LAN Required) and display it. This kit  is a minimalist set of hardware to support this functionality. We have reduced the cost so you only need to buy the Kit you intend to use. We offer links to other providers that sell the  components so you can source them at the lowest price. The Housing of the display is left to the user we have partnered with Xen Dragon 3d Printing to offer a 3d Printed housing:

We offer a free download from Cricut that creates a housing from cardboard that is free of any cost.

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Calculating EXP in Dungeons and Dragons

The formal method for calculating the experience award for a character has changed in many ways over the versions.  But it still remains one of the most contentious issues as each GM is required to moderate the results and players generally argue that more experience is required. This article lists all  the prescribed methods in one place.

Basic D&D

Sum up the Gold Piece value of the treasure taken  the add 100* Hit dice of the monster  then  divide by the Characters Level

AD&D

  1. Calculate the Gold piece value of treasure taken. Each GP taken adds 1 exp to the total Experience award
  2. For each monster Add its BXPV to the HP*(XP/HP) add the SA*SAXPB and the EA*EAXPV to the total experience Award (These  values are derived from a Table)
  3. Divide the total Experience award equally between players

AD&D 2e

 

  1. For each creature calculate  the Hit Dice or Level of the Creature
  2. Add the additional Hit Dice or levels from the Hit Dice Value Modifier table
  3. Multiply by the number of Creatures of that type
  4. Divide by the number of the characters

D&D 3.0

3.0 and 3.5 used the same experience calculation

D&D 3.5

  1. Find each characters Level accounting for monster characters ECL
  2. Find  the CR for each monster defeated
  3. Lookup the XP award for a single monster in a table like:

** Note this table is an approximation not the exact values

4. Divide by this number of Characters in the encounter

5. Add up this EXP awards for all the monsters defeated by each character

D&D 4e

Each Monster description has an experience point value

  1. Total the experience points for all the monsters in an encounter
  2. Divide by the number of characters

D&D 5e

Each Monster description has an experience point value

  1. Total the experience points for all the monsters in an encounter
  2. Divide by the number of characters
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RPGs played in 2021

OK the poll is now closed. We asked 12 of the most popular Facebook RPG Groups “What TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game) have you played in the last year ?” and the the results are shown below.

The most popular by far was D&D5e (Definitely the Cocoa Cola of RPGs The surprise was that AD&D still appears to be the 2nd most popular with 3.5,2e and Pathfinder being less prevalent. The next amazing revelation was the sheer number of RPGs that are played.

Our draw for the lucky winner of a GMLight Core will take place today and they will be informed via Facebook Messenger.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and pandemic free new year.

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Starting selling on Amazon

Selling on Amazon proved to be a lot more work than I was anticipating I started to create a sellers account on the 27th of November and had finally created and account by the 5th of December the supporting documentation required was “extensive”. I then found that I should really register the GMLight Brand before selling items on amazon otherwise other sellers could hijack my amazon listing. So I started the Brand registry process. I also found out that I have to buy Bar codes to do this if I don’t want to create an amazon listing that may have issues later on ! when I  get a Bar Code. Specifically all the reviews and ratings may become “lost”. So this was all done in time for Chistmas (but not in time to sell stuff) GMLight Core

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CUMonitor Consumer Release

Development of the CUMonitor hardware is progressing and the first boards acceptable for consumer release have arrives and are going thru soak testing.

CUMonitor PCB changes

The major changes have been to add the facility to power the board through a micro USB connector adding onboard voltage regulation of the 3.3v.  The new A to D circuits can run without the the addition of a burden resistor so these have been removed. This means that the CUMonitor consumer PCB assumes that the 30A 1V current clamps will be used. But this should be OK form most household use cases. The surface mount spaces for the burden resistor have been left in case 100A clamps are required. There was a missing resistor on the previous board that is also fixed.

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CU Monitor PCB Upgrades

The CU Monitor PCB upgrade has involved quite a few changes. Moving to the ESP32S2 processor has meant completely revamping  the build to use  the newer and faster processor. Aside from doing away with the with the ADS1115 chip and reading the A to D values across the I2C bus the board has simplified in a number of other ways.

I’m pleased with the upgrade process even though the PCB board will have to be recreated. The  porting meant using new libraries and did away with the I2C bus. There is lot more space on the chip for expansion and the number of samples  per second has risen to more than 9000 from the few hundreds we had with the old design. The current run of PCB’s have burden resistors that are now redundant and one missing resistor from channel 2. But otherwise appear to work great. I’m soak testing them now before ordering some production quality boards and to see if there are any “undocumented software features” in the new libraries.

One change to go in is adjusting the recess of the jack plug sockets these need to be less as when the jack plugs are inserted thru the case they experience an ejection force because the case pushes the jack plugs away from the PCB. Also I need to add pylon holes to allow rapid alignment when the PCB is inserted into the case