Gameduino: an Arduino game adapter

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1. Creator Mark Edwards on June 28, 2011
  
  Hi, is there any way of tracking my gameduino & extras? Not had any delivery yet (or postcard through the letterbox asking for customs payment). Noticed someone in London claimed to of received 2 (via gameduino twitter) so maybe he/she got mine :(
2. Creator Nick L on June 20, 2011
  
  Cheers James, I got a postcard on Saturday telling me there was a fee to pay. VAT was £3.83, plus an £8 handling fee... Limit for customs not bothering = £18. $31 = £19.15... Just back from paying and collecting, and it looks fantastic - thanks! I can't claim it's a personal gift as it's from a commercial address (ex camera labs), using 'commercial base pricing' for shipping - never mind, these things happen!
  
  Thanks again!
3. Creator James Bowman on June 17, 2011
  
  @NickL US postal service does not track international priority mail beyond that first 'Acceptance' scan. So it's on the way...
4. Creator Kender on June 17, 2011
  
  My extra €20.67 was €8.17 VAT (19%) plus €12.50 charge for the "service" of opening the box and applying the tax. They definately did not fall for the tick in the "gift" box :(
  
  Ah well, the gameduino is fully functional and I'm looking forward to getting it to talk to my Z800 visor :-)
5. Creator Martin Maly on June 17, 2011
  
  Hi, Gameduino just arrived to the Czech Republic. Thanks a lot, GD is impressive, I'm looking for weekend to play with GD. Great work!
  
  PS: Unfortunatelly I had to pay 15 USD as an import VAT :( F**k that greedy govt. :(
6. Creator Nick L on June 17, 2011
  
  Hmm, my tracking info is still just showing 'acceptance', and the last activity was on 3rd June. I hope it's not stuck in California (although there's worse places to be stuck, admittedly!)
7. Creator John Nussey on June 16, 2011
  
  Cheers James, I'll have a look into it and give them a call.
8. Creator James Bowman on June 16, 2011
  
  Hi John, it's unclear. it could be a UK VAT charge. Rules are here - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/customs/post/buying.htm#4.
9. Creator John Nussey on June 16, 2011
  
  Hi James. Likewise, I've just got a £15.55 ($25) Customs charge. Is that to be expected?
10. Creator James Bowman on June 14, 2011
  
  @Kender, ouch, this should not have happened. Please check with local post office and let me know what the charge is for.
11. Creator Kender on June 14, 2011
  
  Got a note today that I can pick up my arduino at the postoffice tomorrow if I pay €20.67 ($30) in shipping costs. Cheers from the Netherlands.
12. Creator ANDY LITTLE on June 11, 2011
  
  James could you post a connection list of the Gameduino pcb connectors with a description of each pin please? thanks
13. Creator ANDY LITTLE on June 11, 2011
  
  waheeey mines arrived in th UK... quiet please game on! Thanks JB..
14. Creator Jim Beck on June 8, 2011
  
  Got my Gameduino too. Worked great and I'm really looking forward exploring what it can do. I actually bought an Arduino board and a couple of books when I got involved with this project and I'm really impressed with its versatility. I see there is a big community of Arduino users out there so I hope I can measure up.
15. Creator Michael Ham on June 8, 2011
  
  Received the Gameduino today, big thanks James and all his elves, went to work on it right a way. I hope to have some cool stuff to share here shortly. Thanks again, Mike.
16. Creator ANDY LITTLE on June 6, 2011
  
  itching to get me paws on this gizmo... got a project lined up for it already
  www.athene-noctua.com
  the pic is itching to connect up!
17. Creator ANDY LITTLE on May 31, 2011
  
  www.athene-noctua.com
  new business venture in th UK
18. Creator Nick L on May 30, 2011
  
  For those checking in here but not following @gameduino on twitter: "Parts are on their way from manufacturer. The big ship will happen June 6th".
  
  Woo and, indeed, hoo!
19. Creator Ian-S on May 19, 2011
  
  Really great - just filled in the address details. Now comes the waiting.
  
  Thinks ... "I wonder which will get here first - Gameduino or Top Gear?"
20. Creator Troy Coon on May 19, 2011
  
  Woot! Filled out my reward card today. I can hardly wait. :)
21. Creator James Bowman on May 17, 2011
  
  Hi Thomas, manufacturer tells me they are very close to being done now...
22. Creator Thomas Brady on May 17, 2011
  
  Could we get an update on the timeline? Have you received units from the manufacturer? Any idea when they'll start shipping to backers?
23. Creator Giant Shoulder, Inc. on May 13, 2011
  
  Near the time the Gameduino ships, there may be another much faster baseboard for around $50. See http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm… It's an 80 MHz 32-bit MIPS processor that's shield and (supposed to be) Arduino IDE compatible. We'll find out more on the 21st of May. I'm speculating a Maker Faire announcement. I'd like to create an Ethernet shield then have an Ethernet enabled, high-performance Gameduino. :) Just a thought.
24. Creator Fred Watkins on May 12, 2011
  
  My last final is tonight and I have 3 weeks before I start summer class... cant they get here faster ... /wish
25. Creator Troy Coon on May 12, 2011
  
  I'm Jonesin for an update. Help a brother out.
26. Creator Nick L on May 12, 2011
  
  It seems very fitting that 255 people backed the $53 level reward on an 8-bit era recreation...
27. Creator Jan Ole Skotterud on May 11, 2011
  
  OOOOO, I'm looking so much forward to get my gameduino now. Hope it dosn't take to many days to ship to Norway
28. Creator Nick L on May 10, 2011
  
  Marvellous, thanks! For about 2 minutes I was looking at the 2560 specs thinking... "oh dear!"
  Good luck with the ship!
29. Creator James Bowman on May 10, 2011
  
  @chiark, yes, I'm using a Mega2560 right now... because the Mega moved the SPI pins off the shield interface, those three jumpers are the way to go: 11-51, 12-50, 13-52. I'll post photos when things calm down a bit here after the ship...
30. Creator Nick L on May 10, 2011
  
  answering my own question... It doesn't seem like it will work on the 2560 for SPI without a little change.
  
  pins_arduino.h already has a conditional around the pin name definition. Looks like mega or mega2560 owners will need to jump wires from 10-13 to 50-53. The only other thing needed will be to declare pins 10-13 as input so we get no strangeness interfering with the SPI
  
  In the initiation code - maybe gameduino setup?:
  #if defined(__AVR_ATmega1280__) || defined(__AVR_ATmega2560__)
  pinMode(10, INPUT);
  pinMode(11, INPUT);
  pinMode(12, INPUT);
  pinMode(13, INPUT);
  #endif
  
  I hope this helps, and I also hope it works!
31. Creator Nick L on May 10, 2011
  
  Just a dumb question: the Mega2560 seems to have SPI on pins 50-53, rather than 10-13... Is there a way of setting SPI on the 2560 to be on pins 10-13 rather than 50-53?
32. Creator James Bowman on May 3, 2011
  
  @pocketscience, yes when the units are sent to me from manufacturer - not long now - I'll send the message via Kickstarter to collect shipping addresses. The big ship will happen a couple of days after that.
33. Creator Gavin Maxwell on May 3, 2011
  
  James, will we be sent shipping notifications for our Gameduinos?
34. Creator Jim Matheson on April 29, 2011
  
  Here is a site i started about the "neutron shield modulator" which allows arduino (and optionally the gameduino!) to work with common modular synthesizer standards. no where near finished yet, but it should be much more complete when people can buy gameduinos at a whim :)
  
  http://www.neutron-sound.com/
35. Creator James Bowman on April 29, 2011
  
  @Troy, yes, looking very likely that retail will happen after the Kickstarter run. @Jim, yes 16 saw and square wave voices should be enough! Plus there's always the sample playback registers for directly generating sounds from the Arduino.
36. Creator Jim Matheson on April 29, 2011
  
  oh i forgot it was now 64 voices, so even doing the "fake" saw and square, thats 16 voices. thats pretty good!
37. Creator Troy Coon on April 29, 2011
  
  Game buttons and joysticks are in. Time to laser the front panel and as soon as I gets the highly anticipated Gameduino I will finish the Gameduino Arcade. W00T!
  
  @James is there going to be somewhere to buy these after the first run? I can see maybe needing a couple more.
38. Creator James Bowman on April 29, 2011
  
  @Jim, did you see this on saw and square waves? http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/cookbook.html#square-and-sawtooth-waves
39. Creator Jim Matheson on April 29, 2011
  
  I suppose it is too late for this, but is there any way that the audio waveform can include saw and square(maybe with variable pulse width) they are much easier to do than sine,
  
  as to the previous question, The display could be a composite one, i havent selected it yet.
40. Creator Colin Dooley on April 29, 2011
  
  @Andy, you said 2.80 for the chip plus a few caps...that's more than just a connector. Plus you have the R&D and the circuit board redesign.
41. Creator ANDY LITTLE on April 26, 2011
  
  @Colin, bit expensive that connector Colin if it all comes to a fiver..lol, but a piggy back pcb might be a way forward, or another design for later with it on is a suggestion in the pot.
  When I get mine I can design the pcb to try this out, who knows it may be a useful add on for a debug screen ,it has a lot of potential. (ps i get my phono connectors for 20p)
  
  @James Bowman, when are the pcb's likely to be shipped? any further update?
42. Creator Bryan Pape on April 25, 2011
  
  Scratch that... I got it working now.
43. Creator Bryan Pape on April 23, 2011
  
  Hi James,
  
  This is a really exciting project. I've been trying to do an ISE build of Gameduino, but it looks like some of the key files (prolly from generated ipcores) are missing. The ones it's having trouble with are:
  
  picture - RAM_PICTURE
  chars - RAM_CHR
  charpalette - RAM_PAL
  sprval - RAM_SPRVAL
  sprpal - RAM_SPRPAL
  sprimg - RAM_SPRIMG
  ck_div - VGA_CLK
  
  Maybe they're hiding somewhere, and I just haven't found them?
  
  Thanks,
  Bryan
44. Creator Colin Dooley on April 22, 2011
  
  @andy "£2.80. rgb IN one crystal a few caps..."
  
  ...plus a connector, etc. Probably going to cost a fiver more in parts when all said and done. There's not a lot of space left on the board to add more chips/crystals/caps/connectors. Maybe the best option is another shield to stack on top of the Gameduino with the extra gubbins and a cable down to the VGA connector to grab the signal.
45. Creator James Bowman on April 21, 2011
  
  @Jim, its output is fixed at the 800x600 resolution. Is the 3" display composite video?
46. Creator Jim Matheson on April 21, 2011
  
  another question,
  Can the gameduino be made to output at lower resolution? i would like to use it with a 3" display, and VGA resolution is expensive and hard to find
47. Creator Jim Matheson on April 21, 2011
  
  Thanks for the quick reply. that is more than i could have hoped for!
48. Creator ANDY LITTLE on April 21, 2011
  
  For those technobrats amongst us (me included) a simple PAL or NTSC encoder will give 1vp/p video output.. the IC is available from Farnell.co.uk Part number 1716147 PRICED AT £2.80. rgb IN one crystal a few caps and out pops composite video.
  
  Worth adding i think Mr Bowman..
49. Creator James Bowman on April 20, 2011
  
  @Jim - yes, it's easy. There is a breakable trace for SPI SEL, and a through hole to connect a new wire to any other pin. Picture at http://excamera.com/files/sel.jpg
50. Creator Jim Matheson on April 20, 2011
  
  Quick question.
  
  Will it be difficult to use a pin other than 9 or 10 for the SPI SEL?
  I am building a board which breaks out the arduino and the gameduino to be used in modular synthesizers. (mostly just voltage level converters and control multiplexor)
  
  Thing is I am using Timer 1 to get 10 bit PWM output, and that timer uses pins 9 and 10.
  
  its not a deal breaker or anything, but just thought i would check.