BlinkoMatEnglish

project overview
Year
Number of pixels	240 (12x20)
Grayscales / Colors
Illuminant
Power input
Contact person	Sven Hendriks
Project website	burningdarkness.de

BlinkoMat consists of a matrix of LEDs driven by an Atmega16 microcontroller by Atmel running at 16MHz. The Atmega16 has 16KB of Flash, 1KB of SRAM and 512 Bytes of EEPROM. The matrix consists of 12x20=240 LEDs. My decision for these dimensions is based upon two things: Firstly, the used microcontroller has 32 I/O lines and hence can drive the LEDs directly and furthermore, the 12x20 LEDs fit on a 160mm x 100mm Euroboard perfectly. ;-)

The idea was to build a "standalone-simulator" for cellular automata, hence the name: BlinkoMat = blinking automaton (or something like this). ;-) During development I added some additional "features" like scrolling text or graphical effects based upon sinewave patterns (i remember one C64-demo which showed such effects).

• What it can do so far:
  • In general:
    • 16 greytones via PWM
    • The matrix is driven through a timer-interrupt
  • Simulation of 2-dimensional cellular automata
    • e.g. Conway's Game of Life, other rulesets are possible
    • Automata which use the Margolus-Neighbourhood (you look at blocks of 2x2 cells)
  • Scrolling text using the good, old Commodore charset PETSCII
  • Starfield simulation
  • Graphical effects which use precalculated sinewave values
• What it cannot do:
  • Brew coffee ;-)
• What is planned:
  • More graphical effects like plasme, fire- and watersimulation
  • Maybe redevelopment of the code directly in Assembler. At the moment C is used.

I hand out schematics and sourcecode later if someone's is interested in.

Pictures and videos you can find on my website: http://www.burningdarkness.de/blinkomat