Planet Arduino

“Avant-garde” is a French term that translates literally to “advance guard,” as in the vanguard that leads an army into battle. In the arts, the term describes people or works that are experimental and push the boundaries of their medium. Emily Velasco, of the Emily’s Electric Oddities YouTube channel, used an Arduino Nano to build a bizarre video game and “avant-garde” is the best way to describe it.

This handheld device runs a video game that charges players with the care of a pet eyeball. A CRT (cathode-ray tube) screen displays that eyeball in beautifully low-res monochrome graphics. An Arduino generates the composite video signal for the CRT screen using the TVout Arduino library. The Nano, CRT screen, and controls are housed within a retro-style enclosure that Velasco made out of an old motor controller case and a custom walnut wood face plate.

The only user input controls are a joystick and a button. The player can move the joystick to direct the eyeball’s gaze and push the button to make it blink. The eye’s pupil even reacts to the ambient light in the room, which the Arduino monitors through a light sensor. The game doesn’t have a goal in the traditional sense. The player isn’t given any quests or objectives. Their only job is to control the eyeball. Velasco described her creation as “the worst fake video game,” but we prefer to say that it is avant-garde and that the masses simply won’t understand its genius.

The post You take care of a pet eyeball in this bizarre video game appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Er13k was inspired to create an Arduino music box to go along with his girlfriend’s giant stuffed dog Tobias. This eventually morphed into something that not only plays songs on its own speaker, but also lights up a 3D-printed keyboard with LEDs. Perhaps its coolest feature, though, is that it includes an RCA output jack to show a cartoon representation of the plush toy on a CRT television.

When the AV output is active, the device pushes tunes through the TV’s speaker and displays 95×95 pixel drawings and simple animations. 

You can see it demonstrated in the video below, as well as some of the build process. On his “channel,” Tobias gets hungry, makes a drawing, and… becomes quite unsatisfied with his job.

Childlike imagination is a wonderful thing. The ability to give life to inanimate objects and to pretend how they’re living their own life is precious, and not for nothing a successful story line in many movies. With the harsh facts or adulthood and reality coming for all of us eventually, it’s nice to see when some people never fully lose that as they get older. Even better when two find each other in life, like [er13k] and his girlfriend, who enjoy to joke about all the mischief their giant dog-shaped plush toy [Tobias] might secretly get into in their absence. The good thing about growing up on the other hand is the advanced technical opportunities at one’s disposal, which gave the imagined personality an actual face, and have it live inside an old CRT screen.

The initial idea was to just build a little music box as a gift, which beeps out [er13k]’s girlfriend’s favorite song with an Arduino on a speaker he salvaged from an old radio. But as things tend to go when you’re on a roll, he decided to make the gift even more personal. The result is still that music box, built in a 3D-printed case with a little piano that lights up the notes it plays, but in addition the Arduino now also displays a cartoon version of [Tobias] through composite video on an old TV. You can see for yourself in the video after the break how he goes through the day gifting flowers and drawings, and ponders about work and alternative career plans — adult problems are clearly universal.

Sure, the music box sound is a bit one-dimensional, but it’s nevertheless a highly thoughtful gift idea that triumphs with a peak personalization factor. If [er13k] ever wants to change the sound though, maybe there’s some inspiration in this drum machine we’ve seen just a few weeks ago, or this pocket sampler.

[Kevin] wanted to make something using a small CRT, maybe an oscilloscope clock or something similar. He thought he scored big with a portable black and white TV that someone threw away, but it wouldn’t power on. Once opened, he thought he found the culprit—a couple of crusty, popped capacitors. [Kevin] ordered some new ones and played with the Arduino TVout code while he waited.

The caps arrived, but the little TV still wouldn’t chooch. Closer inspection revealed that someone had been there before him and ripped out some JST-connected components. Undaunted, [Kevin] went looking for a new CRT and found a vintage JVC camcorder viewfinder on the electronic bay with a 1-1/8″ screen.

At this point, he knew he wanted to display the time, date, and temperature. He figured out how the viewfinder CRT is wired, correctly assuming that the lone shielded wire is meant for composite video. It worked, but the image was backwards and off-center. No problem, just a matter of tracing out the horizontal and vertical deflection wires, swapping the horizontal ones, and nudging a few pixels in the code. Now he just has to spin a PCB, build an enclosure, and roll his own font.

[Kevin]’s CRT is pretty small, but it’s got to be easier on the eyes than the tiniest video game system.