Whack-A-Cap: miniature representation of a popular amusement game

Whack-A-Cap: miniature representation of a popular amusement game

 Introduction:
    Our final project code calls for the implementation of an amusement game often bannered as "Test-Your-Strength" or less accurately (but more commonly) known as "Whack-a-Mole." Our machine is in essence a miniturized version of what can be found in most theme parks across the world. Its construction involves a spring load plastic cap to act as a surface for contact, a wooden mallet which the player uses to hit the plastic cap, and most importantly, a device, called an accelerometer, to measure the shock forces created by the impact of the mallet and the cap surface. A potential player would proceed to hit the plastic cap with the mallet provided, and depending on the level of force registered by the accelerator, a winning or losing result will be annouced visually through a liquid crystal display and light emitting diodes, as well as musically through the use of a speaker.

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CU Organizer

CU Organizer

 

Introduction:

One of the newest and fastest growing additions to the digital age in the 1990s has been the handheld personal computer. Given a little flash memory and a good LCD, anything is possible and commercial products like the 3Com PalmPilot� and IBM Workpad� are flourishing. But as these products expand their functionality so does their price. Last year, a more downscaled device Frankin Rex� card sold very well because it offered a small portable data unit at a minimal cost.

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Etch-a-Sketch

 Etch-a-Sketch

Introduction

For our final project, we set out to write a Controller for the classic toy, the Etch-A-Sketch. What this basically means, is that we use an Atmel micro controller to control two stepper motors connected to the knobs of the Etch-A-Sketch. Thus, an order by the chip to the motors would cause different angled lines to show up in the Etch-A-Sketch making it possible to draw complete pictures automatically.

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Real-time Debugger

 Real-time Debugger

Objective: To design a debugger that is capable of tracing AT90S1200 user programs while the micro-controller is attached to external peripherals. The debugger will be able to display I/O activities, and dump the values of the registers.
Parts Required: Atmel STK-200 starter kit (kit includes a single AT90S8515 micro-controller), Inter x86 compatible PC (required for debugger software), serial cable (required for UART communication), 32k 24 pin 70ns SRAM (HY62256A), latch (CD74HC573E).
Features: Currently Atmel AT90S1200 micro-controllers do not have any tracing functionality, therefore there is no procedure to gather information about the MCU state although it is possible to suspend the program execution by putting the MCU into idle, or sleep mode.
For this reason, the only way to control the program execution is to implement a Virtual Machine inside the MCU, that is, there has to be a program responsible for execution of other programs. This program will be listening to external commands and suspend the program execution and report about the MCU state when necessary.

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Pong on a VT100 Emulator over a serial port

Pong on a VT100 Emulator over a serial port

Gabriel Weisz and Garrin Felber

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Introduction

We wanted to show that it is possible to implement a (faitly simple) game on the ATS4414 board. Pong was an obvious choice, because it was the first video game in history. We chose to use a VT100 emulator because we couldn't get our LCD to work (we decided that the data input was fried), and this was an available alternative. It also supported the other main design decision that we made: rather than redraw the entire screen between frames, just draw the parts of the screen that change.

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Home Security System

Home Security System

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I. Introduction:

For our final project, we designed a home security system with three detection zones. We used magnetic sensors to detect for zone faults. The magnetic switches would trigger the alarm system when opened. A 4-digit security code armed and disarmed the system. The alarm system includes the following features:

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Hangman!

Hangman!
Introduction
For our final project, we used an Atmel AT90S8535 microprocessor to create a hangman game. The letters are displayed on a 16-character LCD, and are input ("guessed") using a 16-button keypad. The 8 LED's on the Atmel development board are used as our "hanging man" - one lights up for each wrong guess. We also attached a speaker to our game which adds sounds to our game.

We programmed our game to randomly select from among nearly 150 different puzzles, although there is enough room in Program Memory to hold thousands of puzzles. A puzzle can consist of any combination of 1-15 characters including spaces.

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