NeoPixel Game Console

Hi makers!

This project was born in 'Creative Electronics,' a BEng Electronics Engineering 4th year module at the University of Málaga, School of Telecommunications.

Pixel and Play is an open hardware/software project to make the creation of interactive games easy. This tutorial is a detailed assembly guide of the console. But that's not all the game. We also provide an Arduino library with lots of processing like methods and several game examples and demos and even a processing app for painting images, etc.

Find all.stl (3D) and Gerber (PCB) files to build your own Pixel and Play console at Open Hardware GitHub.You can install the library either using the Arduino library manager or downloading it directly from our GitHub repository. Also an Instructables assembly guide.

The big picture:

Pixel and Play is an open hardware/software project with the aim of simplifying the creation of interactive games based on NeoPixel matrixes. We provide an Arduino library and a console design alongside all files needed to replicate it, casing 3D models, PCB Gerber files, and an assembly guide.

Assembly Guide

Instructables assembly guide.

The PCB

The PCB was designed in KiCAD and it's been designed to be easy to solder and make. Its main function is to adjust logical levels between Arduino and Neopixel display, and steps the Arduino supply voltage down to 5 V from the 8ish battery volts, making the Arduino's power supply more stable and independent from the battery level.

The Frame

The Arduino Library

We have made an Arduino Library and a YouTube playlist as reference. The library has more than 40 Processing like functions.

• Cool game examples and demos: minesRuner-Accel, minesRunner-gest, demos, testLayout, etc
• Supports all possible led layouts.
• Hot-swap the neopixel matrix by using rebuild()
• Transformations such as rotate(), translate(), rotateMatrix(); Alongside with popMatrix() and pushMatrix().
• Draw methods : setPixel(), line(), rect()
• Display images using image()

MatrixPaint

MatrixPaint is an app developed in processing to make paint Matrix Images easier and abstract the user from having to calculate the pixels that must be lighted up to display the image. We used it for painting the maps of the games.