Conclusions

Results vs. Expectations

Our results meet and exceed every benchmark we proposed. We fully implemented an intuitive and user friendly two player PONG game, as well as a single player version. On top of the traditional PONG design, we added a second dimension of possible motion, to expand upon the complexity and excitement of the game. We implemented sound, through a piezo speaker, which produces a bouncing noise whenever the ball “bounces” off an on-screen wall. We also implemented player specific LEDs that light up when the player it is assigned to scores or wins the game. We also implemented variable levels of difficulty in both the single and two player games. As the score passes certain pre-set benchmarks the paddles become smaller and in the single player game the AI moves faster and more effectively.

Standards

NTSC (National Television System Committee): We utilized the NTSC standard in order to output a video signal to any black and white NTSC-compatible consumer television set. Our signal is in the form of a single coaxial RCA output, operating at an NTSC-specified 60 Hz vertical sync and 15.6 kHz horizontal sync, and voltage levels of 0.0V for sync, 0.3V for black, and 1.0V for white.

Intellectual Property

PONG is a registered trademark (USPTO 2611782) used to represent a game first published and licensed by Atari, whose 75+ game brands were purchased by Hasbro Interactive in 1998. We believe that our implementation of the PONG design, which includes a virtual ball and two opposite paddles, can be considered fair use. This project is for educational purposes and will not be used for profit nor publicly displayed, and we are claiming no credit to the intellectual property of the PONG design. The final code will be publicly available online for educational use only.

Video generation code available from Professor Land was used, as outlined in the Software Details subsection of Program Design.

Ethical Considerations

During our design we strove to always meet our ethical obligations, as specified by the IEEE code of ethics. Highlights of these ethical considerations include:

Point 1:

We have openly and publicly claimed responsibility for making our engineering decisions fully consistent with the safety, health, and welfare of the public and will promptly disclose any facts that come to our attention that may posed a danger to the public, as we are doing here in this report.

Point 3:

All of our claims and estimates have been firmly honest, reasonable, and consistent with all data available to us, as can be seen from the consistency from our project proposal to our progress reports and finally to our final design and beyond.

Point 6:

We have maintained our technical competence as well as expanded our technical understanding through this project and have only undertaken technical tasks within our ability to complete in a safe and competent manner as can be seen through our implementation of what we learned through our semester of lab work and our implementation of features beyond what we were taught.

Point 7:

We sought, accepted, and offered honest criticism as shown by both our asking for, and providing of, technical advice and help. We acknowledged and corrected errors as shown by the continual improvement of our design based on the suggestions and advice of our teachers and peers.

Point 10:

We assisted colleagues and co-workers in their professional development by assisting them in their technical work throughout this project development period by providing our suggestions and advice whenever it was appropriate.

References

Datasheets

Mega32 http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/AtmelStuff/full32.pdf
12V to 5V Voltage Regulator http://www.national.com/ds/LM/LM340.pdf
Momentary On Buttons http://www.ittcannon.com/media/pdf/catalogs/d6.pdf
Linear-Travel Position Potentiometers http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T041/0923.pdf
Knob Potentiometers http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Panasonic/Web%20data/EVU-F2AF30.pdf

Vendors

DigiKey http://www.digikey.com

Code Reuse

Video Generation Sample http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/video/Video32v3.c

References

ECE 476 Video Generation http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/video/index.html