[Ken] from the YouTube channel What’s Ken Making is back with another MiSTer video detailing the TapTo project and its integration into MiSTer. MiSTer, as some may recall, is a set of FPGA images and a supporting ecosystem for the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA board, which hosts the very capable Altera Cyclone V FPGA.
The concept behind TapTo is to use NFC cards, stickers, and other such objects to launch games and particular key sequences. This allows an NFC card to be programmed with the required FPGA core and game image. The TapTo service runs on the MiSTer, waiting for NFC events and launching the appropriate actions when it reads a card. [Ken] demonstrates many such usage scenarios, from launching games quickly and easily with a physical ‘game card’ to adding arcade credits and even activating cheat codes.
As [Ken] points out, this opens some exciting possibilities concerning physical interactivity and would be a real bonus for people less able-bodied to access these gaming systems. It was fun to see how the Nintendo Amiibo figures and some neat integration projects like the dummy floppy disk drive could be used.
TapTo is a software project primarily for the MiSTer system, but ports are underway for Windows, the MiSTex, and there’s a working Commodore 64 game loader using the TeensyROM, which supports TapTo. For more information, check out the TapTo project GitHub page.
We’ve covered the MiSTer a few times before, but boy, do we have a lot of NFC hacks. Here’s an NFC ring and a DIY NFC tag, just for starters.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip!
“This allows an NFC card to be programmed with the required FPGA core and game image.” How on earth is there enough storage on a NFC card to store a FPGA bitstream and a game iso? And wouldn’t it take forever to transfer all that data over NFC?
That was my question also…
I believe it means, programmed with the FPGA core and game image identifiers, so they can be selected.
Hmm, I guess you could misinterpret that, but I did say “identifiers” pretty clearly. Obviously the core would not fit an an NFC card, and nor would all but the most trivial game.
Now that I think of it, that would be quite a challenge!
Where did you say the word “identifiers” in the article? Searching for that string turns up nothing.
Hmm. I think that word got edited out by me when I did a final pass. I’ll give you this one. The wording is now quite clunky.
“INEGRATION” title typo?
Aw dammit. Hang on a sec.
Misinterpretation seems to be required with that sentence to get what you(?) actually meant.
Maybe “This allows an NFC card to be programmed with an identifier which selects the required FPGA core and game image.”
And on that note: The only “important” words/terms I got in the whole article are FPGA, NFC and Teensy.
The (rest of the) article doesn’t make any sense beyond the known basics of what NFC cards/tags can do and how they can be used without an explanation what “MiSTer” or “TapTo” even is.
I mean there is the vague sense that some of those unexplained words have something to with retro gaming(?) but the core of the article seems to me to be only understandable when one reads the “MiSTer” and “TapTo” first…
Or maybe the earlier HaD article on MiSTer from ~3 years ago which you only mention at the end…
If NFC-Tags had at least the storage capacity of a floppy, this could be real fun.
But just for switching stored images….
I can’t wait for my DE10-Nano clone to show up.
DE10-Nano comes with the Altera (now Intel) Cyclone V SE 5CSEBA6U23I7 FPGA device and costs $300 bucks each. The DE10-Lite is around $140 bucks but comes with the dumbed-down Altera MAX10 CPLD. See:
https://www.terasic.com.tw
I am way more interested in the (eInk?) picture frame (running?) Tetris in the background of that still image
I’m not 100% sure but it may be 3D printed using this model.
https://makerworld.com/en/models/516319