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A project log for Conway's Game of Life on ATtiny84

ATtiny84-based gamed of life on 8x8 LED matrix with manual setup of 1st generation.

jean-franois-poilpretJean-François Poilpret 12/10/2016 at 17:140 Comments

During the past few days, I have been working a lot on designing the boards for the project.

Since I am a fan of stripboards and I have a bunch of these in my drawers, I decided to go with these, rather than PCB (maybe in the future).

I decided to use 90x50mm stripboards which I designed with LochMaster, a tool I have been using for several years now, and perfect for the job).

The project will use 2 stripboards, stacked on one another, just like Arduino and its shields. That is the only option I found in order to fit all components in rather small form factor.

Under board

Above board

Now the design is over, I'll start preparing these boards (cut strips, cut wires, solder all components and check everything in the end) so hopefully I can soon post pictures of the finished boards.

Besides, I am improving the source code in order to make use of the latest available byte (max 1024 allowed for the contest): now it is detecting the end of game (still life or no life at all) and it will soon show a blinking smilie when there's no live cell left.

I am also working on pausing the game through reuse of the START button (the one which is sued once you have finished setting up the board configuration with the first generation of cells).

Finally, if there is still space left, I'll use one pot to change generation evolution speed). More on that next week.

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