Hackaday Links: March 16, 2014

hackaday-links-chain

Tape decks are fertile hacking ground. In this offering from [Erich] the speed of the motor has been turned into a MIDI instrument. Drive it faster and the pitch rises, slower and it falls. There are all kinds of other magnetic tape hacks around here, this tape delay is a classic.

[Dbever] needed a reason to use a big 7-segment display module. He opened up the drill press at his Hackerspace, Pumping Station One, and added a sensor which shows the RPM of the drill on the display. Hackaday was lucky enough to be invited for a tour of the space last fall.

There’s a lot of hype about 3D printing… and rightly so since it’s the radest; which is even better than being “the most rad”. But if you don’t have access to one that shouldn’t stop you. Here’s an example of making robot parts using polymorph instead of 3D printing (or laser cutting) them.

If you’re living in the east-coast metroplex and are unable to travel to Maker Faire Bay Area this Spring you can still get in on some live hacking. Check out MassHack which takes place the same May weekend but in Boston instead of San Fran.

Blimps; not as cool as quadcopters but orders of magnitude less likely to go down in flames (as it were). Draw some inspiration for your own build from silent_runner. The graceful travel of these lighter-than-air-craft make for an interesting camera platform. Here’s a POV video inside of a church, and some shots from the ground while in the woods. [Thanks Oliver]

We try not to pimp crowd-funding campaigns just for the sake of getting them to the goal. But we hope you’ll agree that the Gamebuino we saw a few months back makes a strong argument for backers. Their Indiegogo for the Arduino-compatible handheld gaming rig is over half-way there after just a couple of days.

Gamebuino: A Handheld Arduino Gaming Console Ready For Prime Time

[Rodot] wrote in to tell us about the Gamebuino, a very nicely designed and easily reproducible version of his handheld Arduino gaming console. We originally featured [Rodot’s] Arduino based gaming console over a year ago.

With the Gamebuino, you too can build your own games and gaming hardware around the Arduino. While there is a lot of information currently missing from the site’s Wiki, such as the layout and game code, [Rodot] plans on making everything open source. The console includes a rechargeable lithium battery, a micro SD card, and I2C expansion connectors. This is one project to keep an eye (and two hands) on, especially since a full game library is going to be provided, letting you easily create your own games. See what the console can do in the demo video after the break.

It would be amazing so see some old Game Boy games ported to run on the Arduino, or maybe one of our readers can make an Game Boy emulator for the Arduino!
Continue reading “Gamebuino: A Handheld Arduino Gaming Console Ready For Prime Time”

The BitBox Console Gets Upgraded

BitBox Rev2

The Bitbox, an open source game console, has received a number of updates in the past couple of months. Last time we covered this DIY console, [Makapuf] had just managed to get the first revision to run a simple game. The second revision will increase the colors to 32k, add another channel of sound for stereo, switch controllers from PS2 to USB, and add support for Olimex’s UEXT expansion devices.

While the hardware upgrades are impressive, there’s been a lot of work on the Bitbox software as well. A new game demo called Fire was created as a set of tutorials to help people start developing for the console. There’s also a BitBoy, a GameBoy emulator for the Bitbox. BitBoy is a ported version of gnuboy for the ARM Cortex-M4 processor that powers the Bitbox. It successfully emulates a number of commercial GameBoy ROMs.

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next for the Bitbox. After the break, check out a video of BitBoy running on the Bitbox.

Continue reading “The BitBox Console Gets Upgraded”

Smallest Gaming Console Ever. EVER!

That’s it… the controller and the video game system all in one. This is the standalone version of [Rossum’s] RBox. We looked in on the prototype in June but that was using a bulky development board. You can see the CR1632 button battery, which powers the device for about four hours, sandwiched in between the joystick and the mainboard. Exiting the image on the right are cables used to connect mono-audio and video to a TV via RCA connectors. There’s no port for interchangeable cartridges which means that all game data must be programmed into the ARM Cortex M0 processors. See [Rossum’s] demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Smallest Gaming Console Ever. EVER!”