Game Boy Becomes Super Game Boy With A Pair Of Pis

January 14, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

For the Nintendo aficionados of the 90s, the Super Game Boy was a must-have cartridge for the Super Nintendo which allowed gamers to play Game Boy games on your TV. Not only did it allow four-color dot-matrix gaming on the big screen, but it let you play those favorite Game Boy titles without spending a fortune on AA batteries. While later handhelds like the PSP or even Nintendo Switch are able to output video directly to TVs without issue, the original Game Boy needed processing help from an SNES or, as [Andy West] shows us, it can also get that help from a modern microcontroller.

Testing the design before installing it in the NES case.

The extra processing power in this case comes from a Raspberry Pi Pico which is small enough to easily fit inside of a donor NES case and also powerful enough to handle the VGA directly. For video data input, the Pico is connected to the video pins on the Game Boy’s main board through a level shifter. The main board is also connected to a second Pico which handles the controller input from an NES controller. Some fancy conversion needed to be done at this point because although the controller layouts are very similar, they are handles by the respective consoles completely differently.

With all of the technical work largely out of the way, [Andy] was able to put the finishing touches on the build. These included making sure the power buttons, status LEDs, and reset button all functioned, and restoring the NES case complete with some custom “Game Guy” graphics to match the original design of the Game Boy. We commend the use of original Game Boy hardware in this build as well, which even made it possible for [Andy] and his wife to play a head-to-head game of Dr. Mario through a link cable with another Game Boy. If you’re looking for a simpler way of playing on original hardware without burning a hole in your wallet buying AA batteries, take a look at this Game Boy restoration which uses a Lithium battery instead.

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555 Timer On Its Own In Electronic Dice

January 8, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

One of the most common clichés around here is that a piece of equipment chosen for a project is always too advanced. If a Raspberry Pi was used, someone will say they should have used an Arduino. If they use an Arduino, it should have been an ATtiny. And of course, if an ATtiny was used, there should have simply been a 555 timer. This time, however, [Tim] decided to actually show how this can be done by removing some of the integrated circuits from an electronic dice and relying entirely on the 555 timer for his build.

The electronic dice that [Tim] has on hand makes use of two main ICs: a NE555 and a CD4017 which is a decade counter/divider used for cycling through states. In order to bring the 555 to the forefront of this build, he scraps the CD4017 and adds an array of 555 timers. These are used to generate the clock signals necessary for this build but can also be arranged to form logic circuits. This comes at a great cost, however. The 555 chips take up an unnecessarily large area on the PCB (even though these are small surface-mount chips), consume an incredible amount of power, and are very slow. That’s fine for an electronic dice-rolling machine like this one, but that’s probably where [Tim] will leave this idea.

The 555 timer is a surprisingly versatile chip, and this project shows that there is some element of truth to the folks claiming that projects need naught but a few 555s. We’ve seen entire CPUs built using nothing but 555s, and even a classic project that uses a 555 timer to balance a robot.

Haptic Feedback “Rifle” Lets You Take Aim In VR

January 5, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 25 Comments

There was a time when virtual reality seemed like it would remain in the realm of science fiction at least for the foreseeable future. Then we were blessed with products like the Power Glove and Virtual Boy which seemed to make it more of a reality, if not a clunky and limited one. Now, though, virtual reality is taking more of a center stage as the technology for it improves and more and more games are released. We can see no greater proof of this than the fact that some gamers are building their own custom controllers to interact with the virtual world in more meaningful ways, like this game controller specifically built for first-person shooter games.

The controller is based on an airsoft gun but completely lacks the ability to fire a projectile, instead using the gun as a base for building the controller. In fact, the gun’s operation is effectively reversed in order to immerse the player into the game by using haptic feedback provided by pressurized air. The air is pumped in to what would be the front of the barrel and is discharged through the receiver when a trigger pull is detected in order to generate a recoil effect. The controller includes plenty of other features as well, including the ability to reload ammunition, change the firing mode, and track motion thanks to its pair of integrated Oculus controllers.

All of the parts for this controller are either 3D printed or readily available off-the-shelf, making this an ideal platform for customization and improvement. There’s also a demo game available from Unity which allows for a pretty easy setup for testing. While the controller looks like an excellent way to enjoy an FPS virtual reality experience, if you’re looking for a more general-purpose controller we are also starting to see a lot of development on that end as well.

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Dice Rolls From The Beginning Of Time

January 5, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 30 Comments

Generating random numbers might seem like a trivial task, that is until the numbers need to be truly random for cryptography or security reasons. When that’s the case, it turns out that these numbers are really “pseudo-random” and follow a predictable pattern. Devices that can produce truly random numbers often do it by sampling random events in the real world rather than relying on a computer to do it directly, like this machine which simulates a dice roll by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation.

The cosmic microwave background radiation exists in the infrared at the farthest edges of the observable universe as a remnant of the big bang. It’s an excellent source of randomness, but tapping into it poses a bit of a challenge. For this build, [iSax] is using an old Soviet-era Geiger tube to detect the appropriate signal, and a Nixie tube to display the dice roll. After the device detects two particles from the Big Bang, the device measures the amount of time that passed between the detection of both particles and uses this number to calculate the dice roll.

While it takes a little bit longer to roll this dice than a traditional one since it has to wait to detect the right kind of particles, if you really need the randomness it can’t be beat. It certainly works as dice, but we can also see some use for generating truly random numbers for other applications as well. For some other sources of random inspiration be sure to check out our own [Voja Antonic]’s deep dive into truly random number generation.

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The Legend Of Zelda: Decompiled

December 24, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

Keeping source code to programs closed is something that is generally frowned upon here for plenty of reasons. Closed source code is less secure and less customizable, but unfortunately we won’t be able to convince everyone of the merits of open source code any time soon. On the other hand, it is possible to decompile some of those programs whose source remains behind locked doors in an attempt to better understand that code, and one of the more impressive examples of that of late is this project which has fully decompiled Ocarina of Time.

To get started with the code for this project, one simply needs to clone the Git repository and then use a certain set of software tools (depending on the user’s operating system) to compile the ROM from the source code. From there, though, the world is your rupee-filled jar. Like we’ve seen from other decompiled games, any number of enhancements to the original game can be made including increasing the frame rate, improving the graphics, or otherwise adding flourishes that wouldn’t otherwise be there.

The creators of this project do point out that this is still a work-in-progress as only one of the 18 versions have been completed, but the fact that the source code they have been able to decompile builds a fully-working game when recompiled speaks to how far along it’s come. We’ve seen similar processes used for other games before that also help to illustrate how much improvement is possible when re-writing old games from their source code.

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A Programming Language To Express Programming Frustration

December 14, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 26 Comments

Programming can be a frustrating endeavor. Certainly we’ve all had moments, such as forgetting punctuation in C or messing up whitespace in Python. Even worse, an altogether familiar experience is making a single change to a program that should have resulted in a small improvement but instead breaks the program. Now, though, there’s a programming language that can put these frustrations directly into the code itself into a cathartic, frustration-relieving syntax. The language is called AHHH and it’s quite a scream.

While it may not look like it on the surface, the language is Turing complete and can be used just like any other programming language. The only difference is that there are only 16 commands in this language which are all variants of strings of four capital- or lower-case-H characters. The character “A” in the command “AHHH” starts the program, and from there virtually anything can be coded as a long, seemingly unending scream. The programming language is loosely related to COW which uses various “moos” to create programs instead of screams, and of course is also distantly related to brainfuck which was an esoteric programming language created in order to have the smallest possible compiler.

We can’t really recommend that beginner programmers start to learn this language instead of something more practical like Python, esoteric languages like these can teach us a lot about the way that computers work. This language, for example, lets you code in pixels instead of characters. Others are more for fun such as this language which turns your code into an ’80s rock ballad.

Thanks to [Kyle F] for the tip!

Modern Features In Classic Radio

December 7, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 53 Comments

As consumer electronics companies chase profits on tighter and tighter margins, it seems like quality is continually harder to find for most average consumer-grade products. Luckily, we don’t have to hunt through product reviews to find well-built merchandise since we have the benefit of survivorship bias to help us identify quality products from the past that have already withstood the test of time. [Tom] has forever been fond of this particular Sony TV/radio combo from the ’70s so he finally found one and set about modernizing it in a few key ways.

Among the modifications to this 1978 Sony FX-300 include the addition of a modern color display, Bluetooth, an upgraded FM radio, and a microphone. At the center of all of this new hardware is a Teensy 4 which [Tom] has found to be quite powerful and has enough capabilities to process the audio that’s being played in order to make visual representations of the sound on the screen. He also implemented a bitcrusher filter and integrated it into the controls on the original hardware. He’s using an optimized version of this library to cram all of that processing ability into such a small chip, and the integration of all this new hardware is so polished that it looks like it could be an original Sony stereo from the modern era.

While some may complain about restomod-type builds like this, we don’t really see any need to be arbitrarily or absolutely faithful to bygone eras even if the original hardware was working properly in the first place. What works is taking the proven technology of the past and augmenting it with modern features to enjoy the best of both worlds. Much like this hi-fi stereo which blends the styles and technology of the 90s with that of the 60s in an equally impressive way.