This DIY Logic Gate Game Is Perfect for Learning Computing Fundamentals

You’re reading this article, so we can safely assume that you know how to operate a computer. But do you understand how that computer works? Most people don’t — and that includes many technical people who work on computers for a living. That’s because computers, at their lowest level, rely on Boolean logic that isn’t intuitive to the human brain. If you’re interested in gaining an understanding of Boolean logic and computing fundamentals, then Bkriet’s DIY logic gate game is a great way to start.

The idea behind “Name! That! Gate!” is too make learning computing fundamentals fun by turning it into a game. The goal of the game is to infer the logic gates used to convert the inputs (A, B, and/or C) into the output (Y). A logic gate is a binary conditional switch used to control the flow of Boolean algebra. The AND gate, for example, outputs TRUE if both of the inputs are TRUE — but not if one or both inputs are FALSE. This game includes all of the common logic gates: AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, and XNOR.

Three LEDs represent the state of the input and one LED represents the state of the output, so the player can deduce which gates exist between the two. If those were static, then several different logic gate combinations could be valid. So there are push buttons that let the player toggle the states of the inputs to observe the results. Gameplay goes through ten stages, starting with a single logic gate at stage one and moving to the full ten. Players start with 140 points and lose a point every time they toggle an input. Push buttons let the user select the type of gate they believe represents each stage. Selecting the wrong gates results in a total loss of the available 14 points for that stage. After the last stage, players receive a total score.

If this game interests you, then you can build it with around $20 worth of components. Those include a Raspberry Pi Pico development board, an I2C 16x2 character LCD screen, LEDs, push buttons, a power supply, and a handful of standard miscellaneous parts. The enclosure if fully 3D-printable, so the only other cost is filament. Bkriet programmed the game code in MicroPython and provides that on the Instructables page.

There are plenty of other ways to learn how logic gates work and to develop an understanding of Boolean logic, but this game turns it into a fun puzzle.