Teburu Hardware

Teburu Core

The Teburu Core is the component whose main function is to communicate with the game apps via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and to get messages from the other Teburu hardware components.

It is also needed to recharge the Teburu Dice and to recognize Smart Miniatures thanks to its RFID sensor.

The Teburu Core has no internal battery - it only turns on if connected to a power source via USB-C cable. There is no possibility to play with a disconnected Core, but a powerbank can be used.
Also other power sources are permitted, as long as there is at least a stable voltage of 5 V and 250 mA.

WARNING: The Teburu Core may turn on and connect but not function properly if underpowered (e.g. the RFID sensor doesn't work).

If you are using a powerbank as a power supply, check the output power and that you have enough battery. Some powerbanks (Teburu Powerbank included) could not function properly if the residual charge is minimal.

Teburu Board

The Teburu Board has 40 sensors, 90 mm away from each other, inside a 8 x 5 grid. Each board sensor can detect one Smart Miniature at a time.

When fully opened, the board size is 75.5cm x 45cm.

When fully folded, the size is reduced to 28.5cm x 45cm.

Teburu Dice

After rolling a Teburu Die, it reads the result thanks to its accelerometers. The result is then wirelessly communicated to the Teburu Core which sends the result to the game app via Bluetooth.

You can roll the dice wherever you like, within a few meters from the Teburu Core.

At least a charged die is necessary to play any Teburu game.

To recharge a die, simply place it in the appropriate slot of the Teburu Core, making sure that the face with the 6 (6-sided dice) or the 10 (10-sided dice) is the one on top of the die.

You can also keep dice in charge while playing.

Teburu LED Ring

The Teburu LED Ring is used by the games to have specific info on the board, e.g. the status of a Boss’ side in The Bad Karmas.

It is not mandatory to play, but it’s recommended to use it for a better gaming experience.

The Teburu LED Ring can be recharged via USB-C cable. To do it, remove the Boss-sized Miniature from the Teburu LED Ring and verify that the LED colors sequence is the following:

• the 4 white LEDs light up in sequence and remain lit
• all LEDs turn off
• the green LEDs flash twice to indicate the charge (4 full charge, 1 low charge)
• every 10 seconds the battery level is refreshed and the green LEDs flash twice to indicate that it’s charging.

Smart Miniatures

Smart Miniatures are special miniatures that can be recognized by the Teburu Core to know their identity and by the Teburu Board to track their position.

Not all miniatures of a Teburu game are “smart”, e.g. miniatures controlled by the game's artificial intelligence.

Smart Miniatures must not be recharged and they don’t have a battery.

Each Smart Miniature is unique worldwide and stores its specific gameplay data.

A Hero-sized Smart Miniature base size is around 15-18mm and contains a RFID tag - which contains the identity of the miniature - and a magnet - used to track the position on the Teburu Board.

The position of a Boss-sized Miniature is not tracked by the Teburu Board - it only has a RFID tag that is placed below the front side of the miniature.

Board sensors and system flexibility

The sensibility of each sensor on the board grants a slack of 1 cm in all directions (from its center). Considering that the base size of the miniature is 2.5 cm, this means that to have a Smart Miniature recognized by the sensor, it needs to be placed inside a circular area of around 4.5 cm.

Concerning the need to register the movement of each miniature (especially for games with many of them like a dungeon crawler), there’s a basic concept, a design principle, that we want to explain more in detail.

There are miniatures controlled by players and miniatures controlled by the app (usually enemies and monsters). When players move their pawns they have to register the movement by placing their miniature on the desired board sensor. When the app (the AI) moves its pawns, there’s no need to register their movement one by one, players can move them all together like in a normal board game. This is possible simply because the system already knows where all the enemies should be, so we usually implement a simple “confirm button” on the app to let it know that the board state has been updated accordingly.

This also reduces the costs of a Teburu game. In fact, for games like dungeon crawlers, there’s no need for monsters and minions to be Smart Miniatures, they can be simple plastic without added costs.

After several years of research and prototyping, the absolute best compromise between an economically affordable system and the appropriate sensor density is the actual solution of having 40 sensors on the Teburu surface.

With this density, many games are easily reproducible (and enhanceable!) on Teburu, such as Arkham Horror, Betrayal, Mansions of Madness, Dead of Winter, etc, which use rooms/areas for movement instead of individual cells.

Also, zones don't have to be regular or square, they can also have totally irregular shapes. The app keeps track of characters in the various zones, so once a miniature has been detected by a sensor, a smartly designed game app interprets the interactions in the proper way based on the situation: movement, attack enemies in the zone, research… After the interaction, the miniature can be moved within the zone graphic boundary to make room for the next character to arrive in the same zone. This automatism of leaving the sensor free for other miniatures is something that comes naturally after a few turns of a game.

Last but not least, the system has been engineered to be open to wired / wireless expansions and peripherals.