Yet Another Pong-clock

February 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[PT] let us know that Adafruit Industries has just release a pong clock kit. The $80 price tag might seem a bit steep but it does come with a custom-ordered KS0108 display in order to get white on black like the classic video game, as seen after the break. Also included is the laser-cut case, an ATmega328 microcontroller, RTC, and all the other bits needed to get this working.

We just saw a pong clock built on a breadboard using a KS0108 display but that one used a PIC processor. Adafruit always open-sources their designs and code so you can head over to the kit details page if you already have the hardware on hand to throw this together.

Continue reading “Yet Another Pong-clock” →

PIC Pong Clock

February 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Andrew] built this pong clock over the span of a couple of days. The PIC 18f2520 he used can serve as a real time clock with the addition of an external clock crystal. His project proves the usefulness of an oscilloscope as poor board layout caused interference in the crystal connections, something difficult to troubleshoot without this handy lab tool.

Pong clocks have been quite popular. This one is nice because it’s easy to throw together now that [Andrew’s] done the coding work for you. Written in assembly, reading and understanding his code might be a good exercise if your low-level language skills are lacking.

Pong Clock

September 14, 2008 by Eliot 5 Comments

[funnypolynomial] saw this Pong clock years ago and had been planning on building his own version. With a move looming he decided it was finally time to finish up his Pong clock since completed projects take far less room than incomplete ones. The core of the system is a ThinkPad. He separated the hinge and bolted the keyboard to the back of the screen. The display ribbon was long enough, but he had to extend the wires for the backlight. The power button was also extended and the battery removed. The software is a Windows screen saver that uses the two mouse buttons for navigation similar to how you set a two button watch. Every minute the the left player misses the ball and the right player’s score increases. You can see a video of the clock below. In the past, he also turned a digital multimeter into a clock. Continue reading “Pong Clock” →