Simple Sprite Routines Ease Handheld Gaming DIY

May 26, 2020 by 2 Comments

Making your own handheld games is made much easier with [David Johnson-Davies’] simple sprite routines for the Adafruit PyBadge and PyGamer boards. Sprites can be thought of as small, fixed-size graphical objects that are drawn, erased, moved, and checked for collision with other screen elements.

xorSprite() plots an 8×8 sprite, moveSprite() moves a given sprite by one pixel without any flicker, and hitSprite() checks a sprite for collision with any screen elements in a given color. That is all it takes to implement a simple game, and [David] makes them easy to use, even providing a demo program in the form of the rolling ball maze shown here.

These routines work out-of-the-box with the PyBadge and PyGamer, but should be easy to adapt to any TFT display based on the ST7735 controller. The PyGamer is the board shown here, but you can see the PyBadge as it was used to create an MQTT-enabled conference badge.

If you really want to take a trip down the rabbit hole of sprite-based gaming graphics, you simply can’t miss hearing about the system [Sprite_TM] built into the FPGA Game Boy badge.

Teardown: Nabaztag

May 26, 2020 by 27 Comments

In 2020 there is nothing novel or exciting about an online device. Even the most capable models are designed to be unobrusive pucks and smart speakers; their function lies in what they do rather than in how they look. In 2005, an Internet connected device was a rare curiosity, a daring symbol of a new age: the “Internet of Things”!

Our fridges were going to suggest recipes based upon their contents, and very few people had yet thought of the implications of an always-on connected appliance harvesting your data on behalf of a global corporation. Into this arena stepped the Nabaztag (from the Armenian for “rabbit”), an information appliance in the form of a stylised French plastic rabbit that could deliver voice alerts, and indicate status alerts by flashing lights and moving its ears.

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Nintendo Switch Gets A Stylish Dock In A Broken NES

May 26, 2020 by 13 Comments

The Switch is Nintendo’s latest home console, which has forever blurred the line between handhelds and consoles you plug in to your TV. It does both! Typically, hooking up to a screen is done through the dock, but that wasn’t quite cool enough for [sturm]. He took a NES and turned it into a tidy Switch dock instead!

The build starts with an original NES shell, which is gutted of its original hardware. The PCB from the original dock is installed, and a slot cut in the top of the NES to allow the Switch to be inserted. Naturally, there’s a spring flap reminiscent of the Super NES to keep the dock looking clean when not in use. When it is installed, a series of cables and bezels break out the USB ports to the original controller ports on the NES.

It’s a tidy build that brings a touch of nostalgia to the modern console. We’re sure an official version would sell like hotcakes, too. There’s plenty of similarly inspired builds for the Switch, with the Gamecube Joycons a particular highlight!

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Aluminium Pucks Fuel Hydrogen Trucks

May 26, 2020 by 147 Comments

In the race toward a future free from fossil fuels, hydrogen is rapidly gaining ground. On paper, hydrogen sounds fantastic — it’s clean-burning with zero emissions, the refuel time is much faster than electric, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles can go longer distances between refuels than their outlet-dependent brethren.

The reality is that hydrogen vehicles usually need fuel cells to convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity. They also need pressurized tanks to store the gases and pumps for refueling, all of which adds weight, takes up space, and increases the explosive potential of the system.

Kurt Koehler has a better idea: make the hydrogen on demand, in the vehicle, using a solid catalyst and a simple chemical reaction. Koehler is the founder of Indiana-based startup AlGalCo — Aluminium Gallium Company. After fourteen years of R&D and five iterations of his system, the idea is really starting to float. Beginning this summer, these pucks are going to power a few trucks in a town just outside of Indianapolis.

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Tic Tac Arduintoe Moves The Game To 4×4

May 26, 2020 by 5 Comments

We know you’re out there spending a lot more time with your loved ones, and appreciate that you may be running out of ways to keep everyone entertained. [Mukesh] dropped us a tip because he has the antidote to boredom — a new twist on that old chestnut, Tic Tac Toe.

Instead of the usual 3×3 configuration, [Mukesh] made the grid 4×4 so the game would be more engaging. Game play is otherwise the same — this Tic Tac Toe still results in a lot of draws, but they take longer and you can’t see them coming a mile away. What’s even more engaging is that you get to push clicky buttons that light up, and don’t have to draw a grid before every game.

Under the hood is an Arduino Uno that controls 16 push buttons and their corresponding RGB LEDs. Whoever goes first is blue, and player two gets pink. If you win, your color floods the board for a brief victory animation. If the game is a tie, the board turns red. We really like the printed two-piece buttons that house the LEDs and actuate the push buttons while keeping the two separate. Toe your way past the break to check out the build video.

Intrigued by the 4×4 version, but need a build that takes more time? Try building your TTT in TTL.

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Beautiful Sourdough Bread At Home Thanks To Dynamic Recipe Parameterization

May 26, 2020 by 21 Comments

More people are making sourdough at home than ever before, and while it may not take a lot of effort to find a decent recipe, it’s quite another thing to try using recipes to figure out how and why bread actually works. Thankfully, [Makefast Workshop] has turned copious research and hundreds of trials into a dynamic sourdough (and semi-sourdough) bread recipe chock-full of of drop-down options to customize not just ingredients, but baking methods and other recipe elements as well. Want to adjust quantities or loaf styles? Play with hydration or flour type? It’s all right there, and they even have quick-set options for their personal favorites.

In order to do all this, [Makefast Workshop] needed to understand bread at a deeper level than is usually called for. During research, they observed that the format of recipes was often an obstacle to understanding how good bread actually gets made. The reason for this is simple: recipes are presented as standalone documents describing a fixed process; a set of specific steps that, when followed, yield a particular result. What they do not normally do is describe the interplay and balance between ingredients and processes, which makes it difficult to understand how and why exactly the recipe produces what it does. Without that knowledge, it’s impossible to know what elements can be adjusted, and how. The dynamic recipe changes all that.

[Makefast Workshop] performed hundreds of tests, dialing in parameters one by one, to gain the insights needed to populate their dynamic recipe. It’s got clear processes and drop-down options that dynamically update not just the recipe steps, but also the URL. This means that one can fiddle the recipe to one’s desire, then simply copy and paste the URL to keep track of what one has baked.

When it comes to thoughtful approaches to food, this certainly isn’t [Makefast Workshop]’s first rodeo. We covered their beautiful directions for creating delicious speculoos, complete with effective 3D printed molds for a modern twist on a Belgian classic.

Boot Your Pi Over USB

May 25, 2020 by 50 Comments

Historically, booting a Raspberry Pi required an SD card. However, if you follow [tynick’s] instructions, you can get a Pi 4 to boot from the USB port. Combine it with a small solid state disk drive, and you’ll get great performance, according to his post.

The caveat is this depends on a beta bootloader and, of course, you’ll still have to boot from an SD card at least once to load that bootloader. If you were deploying something serious, you’d probably want to make sure the bootloader is suitable for your needs.

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