It Looks Like A Nintendo, But It’s Running A Pi: A Gamer’s Long-Sought Dream Handheld

April 2, 2018 by James Hobson 6 Comments

[Christopher Foote] didn’t play quite as many games as he wanted to as a child. After years of catching up using the RetroPie and the PiGRRL 2, it was when he first picked up a Switch’s joy-cons that inspiration struck. Behold: the PiSwitch!

Realizing they operated on Bluetooth tech, [Foote] spent a fair chunk of time getting the joy-cons to properly pair to the Raspberry Pi 3 and function as one controller. Once done, he relied on Linux Joystick Mapper to manage the keybindings with some extra legwork besides to get the analog sticks working properly.

To make this console mobile, he’s packed a 6600mAh battery and Adafruit Powerboost 1000c into the device, added a second headphone jack and speaker for commuting and home enjoyment, and a Pi V2 camera module. A 3D printed case, encapsulating these components and a seven-inch touchscreen, also allows the joy-cons to be detached — though he plans on updating its design in the future.

The PiSwitch boots into a custom UI that lets you select different services — RetroPie, Kodi, Debian, and the terminal — while the joy-cons seamlessly function together or individually regardless of the activity. Check out the quick intro tour for this project after the break!

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What Is This, A Controller For Ants?!

January 31, 2018 by James Hobson 6 Comments

What’s the smallest controller you’ve ever used? [BitBuilt] forum user [Madmorda] picked up a cool little GameCube controller keychain with semi-working buttons at her local GameStop. As makers are wont to do, she figured she could turn it into a working controller and — well — the rest is history.

This miniaturized controller’s original buttons were essentially one piece of plastic and all the buttons would depress at once — same goes for the D-pad. Likewise, the original joystick and C-stick lacked springs and wouldn’t return to a neutral position after fidgeting with them. To get the ball rolling, [Madmorda] picked up a GC+ board — a custom GameCube controller board — just small enough to fit this project, eleven hard tact switches for the various buttons, and two squishy tact switches to replicate the original controller’s L and R button semi-analog, semi-digital functionality.

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Play A Few Games Of Smash Brothers On The Go With A Portable Wii

January 27, 2018 by James Hobson 10 Comments

How would you approach a build that required you to hack apart a perfectly good console motherboard? With aplomb and a strong finish. [jefflongo] from [BitBuilt.net] — a forum dedicated to making consoles portable — has finished just such a task, unveiling his version of a portable Wii to the world.

While this bears the general appearance of a portable GameCube, it’s what inside that counts. A heavily modified Wii motherboard — to reduce size — forms this portable’s backbone, and it includes two infrared LEDs on its faceplate for Wii Remotes. A single player can use the built-in controller, but [jefflongo] has included four GameCube controller ports for maximum multiplayer mayhem. Although he’ll likely plan on taking advantage of the built-in AV Out port to play on a TV and charge port for those extended gaming sessions, four 3400mAh batteries — with an estimated four hour battery life — should keep him satisfied on the go until he can recharge.

While the electronics display an impressive amount of work, but the final piece is a sight to behold. Check out the demo video after the break!

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Turn A Car Into A Game Controller

December 22, 2017 by Bryan Cockfield 20 Comments

The CAN bus has become a staple of automotive engineering since it was introduced in the late ’80s, but in parallel with the spread of electronic devices almost every single piece of equipment inside a car has been put on the CAN bus. While there are opinions on whether or not this is a good thing, the reality is that enough data is gathered on this bus to turn an unmodified modern car into a video game controller with just a little bit of code.

The core of [Scott]’s project is a laptop and a Python program that scrapes information about the car from the car’s CAN bus, including positions of the pedals and the steering wheel. This information can be accessed by plugging an adapter into the OBD-II port (a standard for all cars made after 1995). From there, the laptop parses the CAN data into keyboard and mouse commands for your video game of choice.

This is an interesting investigation into the nitty-gritty of the CAN bus, but also a less dangerous demonstration of all of the data available from the car than some other cases we’ve seen. At least [Scott]’s Mazda (presumably) lacks any wireless attack vectors!

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A Futuristic Plant To Inspire Bright Ideas

December 4, 2017 by James Hobson 16 Comments

A good video game prop can really spruce up the decor — doubly so if it’s a glowing, futuristic potted plant transplanted(sorry!) straight from Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Since it’s a bit difficult to grow neon light vines, this project is more lamp than plant. The maker with the green thumb is [Phil], from [JumperOneTV], and he is using five meters of warm white strip LEDs cut to varying vine lengths. He’s also procured a store-bought flower pot that conveniently mirrors the in-game model. The vines are made of 16mm polyethylene tubing which he’s shaped using a heat gun — setting their shape by pumping water through it — and secured in the pot with insulation foam. Feeding the LED strips through and wiring them in parallel was simple compared to his next conundrum: supplying the power.

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Mechanical Build Lets You Jump Cacti In Real Life

November 26, 2017 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

Simple to learn, hard to master, a lifetime to kick the habit. This applies to a lot of computer games, but the T-rex Runner game for Chrome and its various online versions are particularly insidious. So much so that the game drove one couple to build a real-world version of the digital game.

For those not familiar with the game, it’s a simple side-scroller where the goal is to jump and duck a running dinosaur over and under obstacles — think Flappy Birds, but faster paced. When deciding on a weekend hackathon project, [Uri] thought a real-life version of the game would be a natural fit, since he was already a fan of the digital version. With his girlfriend [Ariella] on the team, [Uri] was able to come up with a minimally playable version of the game, with a stepper motor providing the dino jumps and a simple straight conveyor moving the obstacles. People enjoyed it enough that version 2.0 was planned for the Chrome Developer Summit. This version was much more playable, with an oval track for the obstacles and better scorekeeping. [Uri] and [Ariella] had to expand their skills to complete the build — PCB design, E-Paper displays, laser cutting, and even metal casting were all required. The video below shows the final version — but where are the pterosaurs to duck?

Real-world jumping dinos aren’t the first physical manifestation of a digital game. As in the cyber world, Pong was first — either as an arcade version or a supersized outdoor game.

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Mega Game & Watch: True Multiplayer Game

November 16, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 8 Comments

Today we’re used to handheld game consoles like the Nintendo Switch, that let you roam around in 3D worlds which include not only 3D players but more terrain than many people walk around in real life in a week. But back in the early 1980s Nintendo’s handheld offering was the Game & Watch, which used a segmented LCD display. An entire segment could be used to represent the player, with player segments spread throughout the display. To move the player, the previous player segment would be turned off while another adjacent one would be on. That also meant that a console could play only one game. Despite these limitations they were very popular for their time.

[Thomas Tilley] decided to improve on the old Game & Watch in a different way, by making it bigger, much bigger. So big in fact that even many teenage players can’t reach both the button to move left and the button to move right in time, turning it into a highly co-operative two-player game. Judging by the video below, that made playing it double the fun. The game he chose to tackle is the Game & Watch Octopus, or Mysteries of the Sea and Mysteries of the Deep in the UK.

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