Howardandhopkins
New Member
First I must thank all the contributors on this forum, if i hadn't been able to read through all the great information here I wouldn't have had been able to work out the different requirements I needed such as controlling displays to build this project.
I decided to build for my son a simple Pong game using 6 off 8x8 LED matrix displays. This then grew into a Clock, Alarm clock, Snake Game and Tetris Game. It's up and running now just need to get it into a box.
The Clock is Hrs and Min with a rotating LED for the seconds and the date is month, day. There just happen to be exactly 60 LEDs around the three 8x8 LED matrix displays where the date is displayed so I used this to rotate the seconds around the LEDs.
From the clock using the IR control you can:
- set the time for the alarm
- set the volume of the alarm and the game bleeps, and
- set the brightness of the display.
Snake is as per the normal Nokia phone game where you eat the apples and the snake grows. You have to avoid bumping into yourself or the walls. It gets faster as it grows and is controlled by the IR remote control arrow buttons.
Pong is played as one or two players and is controlled by two variable potentiometers to move the bats. The ball again gets faster the longer you play.
For Tetris I just used the middle two matrix displays for the game area and show the top score and current score on the sides. It is all one colour but it still plays well with the IR as the control to rotate the pieces, move from side to side or move them quickly downward. Tetris took me a while to work out especially collision testing and how to spot a complete row and then remove it and move the rows above downwards. I only just squeezed it into one program slot on the PICAXE.
Components used are
- Picaxe-28X2 Module,
- DS1307 Clock,
- EEPROM to store things like the character sets to display numbers and words along with top scores etc,
- MCP4131 digital potentiometer for a very basic volume control,
- 6 off MAX7219's to drive the displays,
- Two standard potentiometers connected via USB cables to play Pong.
Happy to share the code bugs and all! if its of interest but there is quite a lot of it so not sure if I can post it here?
Video of the clock and games.
I decided to build for my son a simple Pong game using 6 off 8x8 LED matrix displays. This then grew into a Clock, Alarm clock, Snake Game and Tetris Game. It's up and running now just need to get it into a box.
The Clock is Hrs and Min with a rotating LED for the seconds and the date is month, day. There just happen to be exactly 60 LEDs around the three 8x8 LED matrix displays where the date is displayed so I used this to rotate the seconds around the LEDs.
From the clock using the IR control you can:
- set the time for the alarm
- set the volume of the alarm and the game bleeps, and
- set the brightness of the display.
Snake is as per the normal Nokia phone game where you eat the apples and the snake grows. You have to avoid bumping into yourself or the walls. It gets faster as it grows and is controlled by the IR remote control arrow buttons.
Pong is played as one or two players and is controlled by two variable potentiometers to move the bats. The ball again gets faster the longer you play.
For Tetris I just used the middle two matrix displays for the game area and show the top score and current score on the sides. It is all one colour but it still plays well with the IR as the control to rotate the pieces, move from side to side or move them quickly downward. Tetris took me a while to work out especially collision testing and how to spot a complete row and then remove it and move the rows above downwards. I only just squeezed it into one program slot on the PICAXE.
Components used are
- Picaxe-28X2 Module,
- DS1307 Clock,
- EEPROM to store things like the character sets to display numbers and words along with top scores etc,
- MCP4131 digital potentiometer for a very basic volume control,
- 6 off MAX7219's to drive the displays,
- Two standard potentiometers connected via USB cables to play Pong.
Happy to share the code bugs and all! if its of interest but there is quite a lot of it so not sure if I can post it here?
Video of the clock and games.
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