HIGH LEVEL DeSIGN BOIDS

Rationale and Source of Porject Idea

The miniature arcade collection idea was born from the 1 DOF helicopter lab when we noticed how it was extremely satisfying to turn the potentiometer. We wanted to leverage the feeling of turning the potentiometer as an input control to a simulation or game (in addition to our previous work with boids). After realizing that etch-a-sketch had similar input controls, we decided to re-imagine what other games would look like if they were controlled by potentiometers instead of the classic keyboard input. This gave way to the idea of a miniature arcade collection with a main menu to select different games.

When the user first enters the program, they will see a main menu with several options that they can select by either potentiometer to scroll down and then a button to select the menu option. There will be 5 games to choose from.

Logical Structures

Since we have multiple games, we make a separate thread for each game. We also leverage additional threads for peripherals such as timers (to keep track of system time), potentiometer inputs, and button inputs.

Hardware/Software Tradeoffs

Our project is heavily focused on much more software implementation than hardware setup. For hardware setup, we built two low pass filter circuits to take in the two potentiometer readings. We also set up two active high buttons (with protective circuitry) for selection and return functions. The hardware modules we used on the PIC32 include the ADC module for converting the analog voltages of the potentiometers to a digital value, the SPI module for communication between the PIC32 and TFT, and I/O module to take in the button readings. Since our hardware setup is fairly simple, the software implementation becomes more challenging. For example, we had to resolve issues with the discontinuity and random noise of the continuous potentiometer in addition to complex game logic such as collision physics and input thresholding. The figure below shows the high level block diagram of our system.

Relevant Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks

We believe our project does not have any patents, copyrights, and trademarks issues because we are building those games from scratch and are not using the project for business purposes. There are no pressing intellectual property considerations since the patent for Etch-A-Sketch expired in 1990, 17 years after the patent was filed in 1973. Additionally, though the trademark for Nokia’s original snake game still exists, it is filed under “SNAKES” and has no impact on our project. Other companies, such as Google, have made games with the name “Snake” without violating the trademark since the original trademark does not claim exclusive rights to the word or game. The same situations apply to brick-breaker and pong.