20 de diciembre de 2009

What is P.I.P.E.R?

P.I.P.E.R is a recursive acronym that means "PIPER Is a Portable Embedded Roguelike". It is currently a PIC16f876 microcontroller single board computer, battery powered,  that can be easily programmed to run a "light" roguelike game version. Eight user buttons are provided and a graphical LCD (KS0108 driven, 128x64 pixels) is used as screen.

Full features are:

-Microcontroller: PIC16F876, RISC architecture, with an astounding speed of 4 MHz! (Note this is Mega and not Giga).

-Code Flash ROM: 8 KBytes (less than your old calculator)

-Variable RAM memory: 368 bytes! It seems pretty low...and in fact It's very, very low. I had to use all 80`s old school ram saving techniques just for start the game!.

-Eight input buttons.

-Graphical LCD 128x64 pixels, KS0108 driven. Difficult to program but really cheap on eBay!

-Battery powered, just 3xAA batteries.

-Good form factor...12x8 cm but just 1.5 cm tall. This was really important for me as I wanted the design to be as compact as possible.

-Everything fitted in just one custom single side board.This drove me crazy for months, but was critical for reaching the form factor I wanted.

More Pictures:

From this view you can see that the board is really flat. In next steps I will explain how this was achieved.

Here you can see the battery system (just a 3 AA battery case) and the PIC16f876 microcontroller.

The back of the device...actually the PCB top! Note the velcro strips to hold the batery pack.

Chip holding detail. Same capability 80's computers needed almost 6 chips like this...remember the old 8031?

Everything fitted on the board.

And the final result!

From the back...

Very slim...I like It!