Hackaday Links August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Landing a fixed-wing through hotel balcony french doors

As you can see, launching an RC airplane off of a hotel balcony is easy. But watch the video and you’ll find out trying to fly through the french doors for a landing is another story. [Team BlackSheep] hits (har, har) Thailand in this collection of breathtaking flights.

Quieting rack-mount switch for home use

[VictorB] got his hands on this switch to beef up his home network. Since the three fans on the back sound like a jet engine he did some cutting to use a larger, quieter fan.

Component package alphabet

Sure, you probably know what SOIC stands for, but what is a CSP? You can clear things up a bit by studying your IC Alphabet.

ZX Spectrum audio card

For those still looking to squeeze everything they can out of a classic ZX Spectrum, here’s a way to improve the audio with a custom sound card (translated).

AVR programmer reprogrammed as an NES controller interface

[Slack] modified his USBasp programmer to uses as an NES controller interface. The hardware can be had on eBay for under $10, and he was already using one as a dev board. After seeing this USB to NES dongle post it didn’t take long to make the programmer into a gaming tool.

MSP430 Gaming Shield Based On The Gameduino

July 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Get your 8-bit gaming fix with this gaming shield for the TI Launchpad. It’s called the Launchpad GamingPack and was developed as part of TI’s 2012 Intern Design Contest. The team had just six weeks to complete the project.

The video after the break starts off with some fast-motion PCB layout. It is followed by footage of the board being populated, then anchored with graphics testing and some game play demonstrations. It looks like a real blast! NES controller ports were included on the board, and the device puts out 400×300 VGA, as well as audio.

As with the Gameduino, the hard work is done by the FPGA at the center of this board. It handles all of the VGA timing work, using what looks like 3-bit color. It is also responsible for generating the audio and monitoring the inputs. Since the team was under a time crunch the shield also includes a 10-pin header on the underside which was added for easy connection with a logic analyzer.

Continue reading “MSP430 Gaming Shield Based On The Gameduino” →

USB Dongle For Unmodified NES Controllers

July 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

This USB dongle will let you use your unmodified NES controllers on a computer. That’s because it includes the same socket you’d find on the classic console.

The image above shows the prototype. Instead of etching the copper clad board, each trace was milled by hand (presumably with a rotary tool). To the left the black square is made of several layers of electrical tape that builds the substrate up enough to fit snugly in a USB port.

An ATtiny45 running the V-USB stack has no problem reading the controller data and formatting it for use as a USB device. This is actually the second iteration of the project. The first attempt used an ATtiny44 and a free-formed circuit housed inside the controller. It worked quite well, but required alterations to the circuit board, and you needed to replace the stock connector with a USB plug. This dongle allows the controller to go unaltered so it can be used with an NES console again in the future.

Multi-system Nintendo Emulator Uses Stock Controllers

June 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

The first month of [WoolyDawg5’s] summer break went into building one Nintendo emulator to rule them all. He thinks there’s nothing like playing the games on the original controllers, and we agree with him 100%. Here you can see that the cartridge door on this NES enclosure hides the extra connectors he needs.

With that door closed this looks like a stock console, but only from the front. If you take a look at the back of it you’ll see how he pulled this off. There’s a Zotac motherboard whose I/O panel has been fitted into the back. It’s responsible for emulating games for the NES, SNES, and GameCube consoles — we’re sure it can do more but that covers the controller ports seen here. Each port is wired to a USB controller module. The cables for these modules exit the back of the case and plug into the motherboard’s I/O panel. There is WiFi for the board, and that’s what [WoolyDawg] uses for configuration, tunneling into the OS instead of connecting a keyboard or mouse.

Of course you could just shoehorn all-original console hardware into one package to accomplish something like this.

[Thanks KoldFuzion]

NES Controllers For Any Bluetooth Application

June 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

[Dustin Evans] wanted to used his original NES controllers to play emulated games. The problem is he didn’t want to alter the classic hardware. His solution was to use the connectors and enclosure from a dead NES to build a Bluetooth translator that works with any NES controller.

Here he’s showing the gutted half of an original NES. Although the motherboard is missing, the connectors for the controllers are still there. They’ve been rewired to an Arduino board which has a BlueSMiRF modem. The controller commands are harvested by the Arduino and sent to whatever is listening on the other end of the Bluetooth connection. He also has plans to add a couple of SNES ports to the enclosure so that those unaltered controllers may also be used.

In the video after the break [Dustin] walks us through the hardware setup. He then demonstrates pairing the device with an Android phone and playing some emulators with the pictured controllers.

Continue reading “NES Controllers For Any Bluetooth Application” →

Beautiful Wooden Case For A Portable NES

May 7, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

After building a few portable gaming systems, [Parker] wanted to try something a little different than the usual sleek plastic builds. He decided to go with a nice wooden classic NES. He started by gutting a NOAC or Nintendo On A Chip. The NOAC has already done most of the miniaturization for him, so he was mainly focusing on the portability. While this wasn’t the most extreme mod, it wasn’t just a case swap either. He took great pictures of the process of modifying the screen to work and putting everything together. The final product is fantastic looking.

The first comment we thought was, why is the game facing backward? Due to the shape of the NOAC board, he would have had to either add more depth to the case, or extended and flipped the actual cartridge plug to make the game face forward, so we can understand why he left it alone.

Using An NES Controller With An Atari 2600

May 2, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

Instructibles user [Danjovic] managed to get his hands on an Atari 2600, but all the joysticks were damaged beyond repair. Instead of building an atari joystick from scratch, he looked to a slightly newer generation of gaming and decided to us an NES controller instead. This was done fairly easily with the aide of an Arduino.

This seems like a nice easy mod that could breathe a little new life into some old games, but we just can’t imagine playing without that original joystick!