Building a Mechanical Arcade-Style Game with a Bare ATmega328P

Clem Mayer had previously created a handheld gaming system that is unique, but still fairly traditional — as in it has a screen. For this build, however, he’s decided to step out of the video gaming box and made an electromechanical game that’s more akin to pinball than something created for a computer or console. The concept here is that a ball is balanced on a rail, and pulled upwards by a pair of belts and continuous rotation “servos,” while avoiding obstacles.

He developed the system first for an Arduino Uno, then ported the code to a bare ATmega328P chip, without even adding an external oscillator. This type of setup takes a bit more work than just unplugging the ATmega chip from an Uno, as the firmware normally expects certain hardware to be present. He goes over some of the challenges in doing this (including killing three microcontrollers) along the way. His advice is to use a decent programmer, as well as a socket for the microcontroller so you can remove it when needed.

The device is played with a pair of rugged-looking industrial joysticks, and includes an array of LEDs controlled with shift registers. Details on the mechanical arcade game can be found here if you'd like to construct your own rig!