Hackvision Is Build-your-own Retro Game

October 24, 2010 by 23 Comments

If you wanted to try your hand at programming some retro games Hackvision can jump-start the process. It is an Arduino-based game console in a controller format. You get four directional buttons and one function button. It has two RCA jacks for mono audio, and black and white video.

We’re happy to find that there’s information about game development that will help you follow along with the Space Invaders and Pong examples. The system uses the Arduino TVout library for video, which is robust and fairly easy to interact with. But once you see the game play in the video after the break it’ll be hard to resist building one of these. Don’t forget, this is Arduino based. If you already have an Arduino that uses an ATmega328 you just need to build the audio, video, and button circuits. Continue reading “Hackvision Is Build-your-own Retro Game” →

Hijacking A Sony Watchman For Pong

March 7, 2018 by 10 Comments

The era of the vintage television was a great one, and one of the transitional by-products was the Sony Watchman. It was a portable TV which Sony started selling in 1982, and the amazing thing about it was that it had an actual 4-inch cathode ray tube or CRT. [Sideburn] just posted a video in which he hijacks the internals of a Watchman to make it into a portable game of Pong.

The hack begins with removing the TV tuner module inside to make some room for the new residents. Next comes the M51364P which is VIF video decoder chip, and for which surprisingly there is not a lot of info on the web. They were able to find a part of the schematic, which though it was in Russian may still be useful for enthusiasts. Removing the VIF revealed the audio and video pins that needed the appropriate signals for the hack to be successful. In an age of multilayer boards it is amazing how a two-layer PCB makes life so easier for the tinkerer.

For the new brains an Arduino Nano clone was selected, and instead of adding modern buttons the existing volume and band select switches were convinced to be the paddle control and play/pause button. Getting everything to fit was easy with the absence of the tuner module, and voila! New(ish) hardware. For the firmware, [Sideburn] turns to Hackvision firmware which has a host of games such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, and even Tetris.

We covered Hackvision a few years ago as a hardware/firmware bundle, and if you are more into CRTs then check out the Arduino driven 6845 CRT controller.

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Video Standards Are More Than Video Signals

November 19, 2015 by 78 Comments

The number of hours we spend staring at screens is probably best unknown, but how about the technology that makes up the video on the screen? We’ve all seen a reel-to-reel projector on TV or in a movie or maybe you’re old enough to have owned one, surely some of you still have one tucked away real nice. Whether you had the pleasure of operating a projector or just watched it happen in the movies the concept is pretty straight forward. A long piece of film which contains many individual frames pass in front of a high intensity lamp while the shutter hides the film movement from our eyes and our brain draws in the imaginary motion from frame to frame. Staring at a Blu-ray player won’t offer the same intuition, while we won’t get into what must the painful detail of decoding video from a Blu-ray Disc we will look into a few video standards, and how we hack them.

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Mimimalist Arduino Gaming Platform

May 27, 2015 by 20 Comments

A pretty color LCD screen, an Arduino, a buzzer and a joystick is all you need for a minimalist gaming console for under $20. At least, that’s all [João Vilaça] needed to get this sweet version of Tetris up and running. He’s working on Breakout right now. His Breakout looks even better. See the postscript below for details.

It’s a testament to the current state of the hardware hacking scene that [João] could put this device together in an afternoon for so cheap, presumably after waiting a while for shipments from China. The 320×240 SPI color TFT LCD screen used to cost twice as much as this whole project did. And wiring it up is a simple matter of connecting this pin to that pin. Almost child’s play.

Equally impressive is the state of open source software. A TFT library from Seeed Studios makes the screen interface a piece of cake. [João] wrote his own sound and joystick code, and of course the Tetris gameplay itself, but it’d be much more than a few weeks’ work without standing on the shoulders of giants. Check out [João]’s Github for the project code and stick with us after the break for a demo video and some of our other favorite Arduino gaming hacks.

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Hackaday 10th Anniversary Update

October 4, 2014 by 4 Comments

The Hackaday 10th anniversary is going great guns. Attendees have already built line following robots with [Adam Fabio], learned lockpicking with [Datagram] and [Jon King]. [Jame Hobson’s] team is building an awesome video game controller. The attendees are currently building LiPo battery chargers. [Todd Black] gave a great presentation on the care and feeding of LiPo batteries. He designed and built a PCB just for this event!

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Some familiar faces are on hand, such as [Chris Gammell], [Bil Herd], as well as the entire Hackaday editing team!

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Still to come are talks by [Steve Collins], [Quinn Dunki], [Jon McPhalen], and [Thundersqueak].

Want to check out the live view? Click our Hackvision streams!

8-Bit Video Game Is Best Of Retro Gaming On A Shoestring Budget

November 28, 2013 by 15 Comments

[Petri] wrote in to show off the 8-bit gaming system and original platformer which he and [Antti] developed. Don’t get us wrong now, it’s impressive that the duo were able to put together what looks like a very interesting game. But we’ve seen many industry-leading video games developed with just one or two people (we’re thinking all the way back to the days of Atari). Nope, what’s most interesting to us is that the console is also their creation. We should note that the title screen was the work of their friend [Juho].

Take this with a grain of salt, as the bottom right image in the vignette obviously includes an Arduino. But isn’t it a testament to the state of open hardware and the sharing of knowledge through the Internet that this is even possible on the hobby level? And just because we call it “hobby” doesn’t mean you have to lower your expectations. This thing is full featured. Watch the clip after the break to see the ATmega328 driving a 104×80 resolution screen with a 256 color palette, while using four audio channels for the chiptunes. The thing even utilizes an original NES controller port for user input.

And for those of you who are thinking we’ve seen the same thing before, we never get tired of seeing projects where a lot of hard work has obviously paid off!

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Gameduino

March 2, 2011 by 19 Comments

Gameduino is an FPGA based sound and graphics adapter for microcontrollers. Laid out as an Arduino shield, all it really takes is a microcontroller with SPI and some code to send commands to the board which lets you toggle registers, handle memory, and drawing functions.

Once the data gets there, it is greeted by a Xilinx FPGA which puts out a 800×600 72Hz SVGA sync signal, large 512×512 pixel character scrolling backgrounds, piles of 16×16 (up to 256 color) sprites, each with per pixel transparency, rotation, flip, and if that was not enough a 12 bit frequency synth that can do 16 independent voices.

All the resources to make one of these is listed on the site under the Making a Gameduino link, but if youre interested in getting a made board there is also a kickstarter page available. There are other ways to squeeze video out of micro controllers from the basic like hackvision to AVGA or even Lucidscience AVR VGA v2, and tons of propeller projects, but this one being stand alone and portable, has a certain appeal.

Join us after the break for a quick video.

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