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Weekend Diversion: The Greatest Pumpkin EVER! [Starts With A Bang]
“Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of a pumpkin.” -Simone Schwarz-Bart
With Halloween just behind us, the only things that pumpkins may mean to you now are pie, soups, or — as John Prine would sing you — a condescending term of affection, as in,
But I recently came across the most amazing Jack-O-Lantern I’ve ever seen, where someone turned a pumpkin into a working, playable game of tetris!
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
This idea — and the design — is nothing short of brilliant. The pumpkin itself was an intricately carved-to-specification operation, with a 16×8 rows-by-columns format, fitted exactly for small LED lights.
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
To get the lights in there, a tremendous amount of soldiering, and planning needed to happen, including the construction of a mock LED matrix and soldiering to a circuit board. Actually, two circuit boards, because they were only meant to handle 8×8 matrices apiece!
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
Then there was the logic/coding that needed to happen, in order to create the pieces and appropriate gameplay, and hook it up to the visual LED interface.
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
Also, because you need a way to control it, an ingenious setup using the pumpkin’s stem as a joystick controller for the game, capable of rotating, dropping, and sliding pieces horizontally.
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
And finally, the entire system was assembled and installed, and hooked up to an external power supply, provided by 8 AA batteries.
Image credit: “Pumpktris” by Nathan at http://www.hahabird.com/.
If you want to see the detailed step-by-step instructions, they’re available here, and it all led up to a spectacular, working game of tetris, playable all inside a pumpkin. The greatest pumpkin I’ve ever seen!
2012-11-03 17:05:33
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/11/03/weekend-diversion-the-greatest-pumpkin-ever/
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