Fuzebox, Open Source Gaming

November 25, 2008 by Eliot 14 Comments

fuzebox

Adafruit has just put their Uzebox based console into production. The Fuzebox is an 8bit game console based around the ATmega644-20PU microcontroller. Full 256 color 240×224 resolution video output is provide by either a composite connection or svideo. There is an SD card slot on board for future expansion. The chip takes care of all the I/O, so you just need to write your game code in C on top of it.

The kit looks easy to assemble. Almost all of the components are through-hole. The video chip is SMD and comes presoldered to the board. The kit has two SNES controller ports included, but you can use NES ports too. There are three ways you can load your program onto the board: 6pin FTDI, ICSP10, and ICSP6.

Business Card AVR Board Updated

November 8, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

bcard

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has updated their business card AVR breakout boards to version 1.1. We suspect the changes will probably make them even more popular. The boards are designed for the ATmegaXX8 family of microcontrollers. The center has all 28 pins labeled while either end has a prototyping area. An in-system programming header is also provided. For the new version, both prototyping areas have been increased to accommodate DIP14 packages. The holes for the microcontroller are now larger so that they can hold a ZIF socket. Finally, the power and ground traces have been expanded. We’ve always like the versatility of these boards, as demonstrated in the Tennis for Two project, and can’t help wondering if these updates were made to facilitate another project.

Arduino Duemilanove

October 19, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

The latest generation of Arduino hardware has been released. The Arduino Duemilanove (2009 in Italian) has the same form factor as previous generations. The specs are essentially identical to the Diecimila, but there have been a few changes to the hardware. The power source is no longer chosen using a jumper. A MOSFET and dual OPAMP have been added to the board to automatically selected between USB power and the external plug. Automatic hardware resets are optional now. Next to the USB port are two solder pads labeled RESET-EN. Cut the trace between them to kill the reset. If you ever want it back, just bridge the pads. The hardware was updated to correspond with the release of Arduino cofounder [Massimo Banzi]’s new book.

Accelerometer Controlled Pong

September 23, 2008 by Ian 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYVgXYtxk4E]

[Perry’s] awesome AcceLED Pong project gives new life to a classic game by adding acceleration-based control. The pong paddles are moved by tilting the circuit left or right. Motion is measured by an ADXL203 dual axis accelerometer, and an ATMEGA32 microcontroller converts acceleration into ball and paddle movement. The game display is a three-color SparkFun 8×8 LED matrix with serial interface.

[Perry] also used a similar setup to make a USB LED spectrum analyzer fed by the Linux XMMS media player.

HandUSB Data Gloves Interface

July 12, 2008 by Benjamin Eckel 2 Comments

Following today’s earlier post on data gloves, HandUSB is a glove interface designed to relay fingertip touch data to a computer via USB. Although the gloves themselves are not extremely interesting or useful for your average hacker, the project has some good documentation. The electronics are all open source and he has links to the EAGLE files and the AVR Libc code. You can also find a demo program written for DOS. This project uses AVR-USB by Objective Development so if you are looking to move on from your USB-serial chips, this project would be a good resource to study.

[via YourlTronics]

New Sparkfun Designs

July 10, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 6 Comments

Sparkfun has recently released a bevy of new boards and other devices, with some very intriguing new builds among them.

The first board that caught our attention is the Wee. It is a compact Arduino compatible controller that features a small size, low voltage, and many other minimalist attributes. It is built around an ATMega 168V and uses all SMD parts.

For even tinier fun, check out the LilyPad LED. It is a LED designed to be incorporated into clothing, featuring large holes for threading, a thin and extremely small PCB and a very bright 250mcd light. It is also washable, meaning that one or many can permanently be incorporated into clothing without fear of losing them. You can see these in the turn signal jacket we covered earlier.

The last one we’ll discuss is the LiPoly Charger, a USB lithium ion battery charger. Based on the Max 1555 IC, the LiPoly can use USB bus power or a 2.1mm center positive wallwart power(it uses the more high-powered wall-wart if both are connected). It can’t charge NiMH batteries, but it is still compact, efficient, and very useful.

Arduino PhotoLab

June 30, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 5 Comments

Droplet photography (link translated from French) often produces simple and beautiful images, but timing the exposure can be tricky. Snapping the photo too early or too late can cause you to miss the action, which only lasts a fraction of a second. EquinoxeFR (the people behind the Asus WL500GP audio hack) came up with a solution to this problem using a circuit with an ATmega168 running an Arduino environment. The circuit controls a syringe that contains a liquid and is triggered remotely to release a drop into a darkened chamber. A camera with the shutter open is attached to the chamber, and before the droplet hits, it crosses an IR sensor that triggers the flash to go off a few milliseconds later, capturing the unique crown shape of the impact. No schematic is available as yet, but comments at the bottom of the post suggest one will be coming soon.