1.0 Project Introduction
1.1 Overview
Spark Initiative is a project-based student-to-student mentorship program organized by the IEEE UNM Student Branch. The aim of this program is to help develop the technical skills of a group of club members and give them hands-on experience in creating a simple product. The mentors of this program consist of the technical executives and executive committee members of IEEE UNM Student Branch who teach hardware and software basics as well as useful debugging tips and tricks to the participants.
1.2 Goal
The project goal of Spark Initiative in the 2022/2023 academic year is to build a DIY arcade machine where the user can play pixel games such as Pong and Snake.
1.3 Components
The components used in this project are:
- Push Button
- Arduino Mega
- Joystick
- 320x240 TFT LCD Display
2.0 Project Execution
2.1 Hardware
Initially, the project intended to use the Raspberry Pi Pico interfaced with the TFT LCD screen. However, there was issue with finding a library that could controlled the TFT LCD Screen and due to time contraints, we could not write a library from scratch. Hence, the TFT LCD Screen was interface to a Arduino Mega, which was the microcontroller suggested by the supplier.
2.2 Software
The TFT LCD Sceen was controlled using the UTFT Library made by Rinky-Dink Electronics.
3.0 Results
The participants were able to make a playable Pong game using the TFT LCD Sceen and push buttons.