Schlagwort: CRT

  • You take care of a pet eyeball in this bizarre video game

    You take care of a pet eyeball in this bizarre video game

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino Team — May 7th, 2021

    “Avant-garde” is a French term that translates literally to “advance guard,” as in the vanguard that leads an army into battle. In the arts, the term describes people or works that are experimental and push the boundaries of their medium. Emily Velasco, of the Emily’s Electric Oddities YouTube channel, used an Arduino Nano to build a bizarre video game and “avant-garde” is the best way to describe it.

    This handheld device runs a video game that charges players with the care of a pet eyeball. A CRT (cathode-ray tube) screen displays that eyeball in beautifully low-res monochrome graphics. An Arduino generates the composite video signal for the CRT screen using the TVout Arduino library. The Nano, CRT screen, and controls are housed within a retro-style enclosure that Velasco made out of an old motor controller case and a custom walnut wood face plate.

    The only user input controls are a joystick and a button. The player can move the joystick to direct the eyeball’s gaze and push the button to make it blink. The eye’s pupil even reacts to the ambient light in the room, which the Arduino monitors through a light sensor. The game doesn’t have a goal in the traditional sense. The player isn’t given any quests or objectives. Their only job is to control the eyeball. Velasco described her creation as “the worst fake video game,” but we prefer to say that it is avant-garde and that the masses simply won’t understand its genius.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7eNHkZovpQ?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • Stuffed animal gets its own music/AV box

    Stuffed animal gets its own music/AV box

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Stuffed animal gets its own music/AV box

    Arduino Team — June 14th, 2020

    Er13k was inspired to create an Arduino music box to go along with his girlfriend’s giant stuffed dog Tobias. This eventually morphed into something that not only plays songs on its own speaker, but also lights up a 3D-printed keyboard with LEDs. Perhaps its coolest feature, though, is that it includes an RCA output jack to show a cartoon representation of the plush toy on a CRT television.

    When the AV output is active, the device pushes tunes through the TV’s speaker and displays 95×95 pixel drawings and simple animations. 

    You can see it demonstrated in the video below, as well as some of the build process. On his “channel,” Tobias gets hungry, makes a drawing, and… becomes quite unsatisfied with his job.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1upAoCYbBFw?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • Spiegelbilder Studio’s giant CRT video walls

    Spiegelbilder Studio’s giant CRT video walls

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    After getting in contact with us to share their latest build with us, we invited Matvey Fridman of Germany-based production company Spiegelbilder Studio to write a guest blog post about their CRT video walls created for the band STRANDKØNZERT.

    STRANDKØNZERT – TAGTRAUMER – OFFICIAL VIDEO

    GERMAN DJENT RAP / EST. 2017. COMPLETE DIY-PROJECT.

    CRT video wall

    About a year ago, we had the idea of building a huge video wall out of old TVs to use in a music video. It took some time, but half a year later we found ourselves in a studio actually building this thing using 30 connected computers, 24 of which were Raspberry Pis.

    STRANDKØNZERT CRT video wall Raspberry Pi

    How we did it

    After weeks and months of preproduction and testing, we decided on two consecutive days to build the wall, create the underlying IP network, run a few tests, and then film the artists’ performance in front of it. We actually had 32 Pis (a mixed bag of first, second, and third generation models) and even more TVs ready to go, since we didn’t know what the final build would actually look like. We ended up using 29 separate screens of various sizes hooked up to 24 separate Pis — the remaining five TVs got a daisy-chained video signal out of other monitors for a cool effect. Each Pi had to run a free software called PiWall.

    STRANDKØNZERT CRT video wall Raspberry Pi

    Since the TVs only had analogue video inputs, we had to get special composite breakout cables and then adapt the RCA connectors to either SCART, S-Video, or BNC.

    STRANDKØNZERT CRT video wall Raspberry Pi

    As soon as we had all of that running, we connected every Pi to a 48-port network switch that we’d hooked up to a Windows PC acting as a DHCP server to automatically assign IP addresses and handle the multicast addressing. To make remote control of the Raspberry Pis easier, a separate master Linux PC and two MacBook laptops, each with SSH enabled and a Samba server running, joined the network as well.

    STRANDKØNZERT CRT video wall Raspberry Pi

    The MacBook laptops were used to drop two files containing the settings on each Pi. The .pitile file was unique to every Pi and contained their respective IDs. The .piwall file contained the same info for all Pis: the measurements and positions of every single screen to help the software split up the video signal coming in through the network. After every Pi got the command to start the PiWall software, which specifies the UDP multicast address and settings to be used to receive the video stream, the master Linux PC was tasked with streaming the video file to these UDP addresses. Now every TV was showing its section of the video, and we could begin filming.

    STRANDKØNZERT CRT video wall Raspberry Pi

    The whole process and the contents of the files and commands are summarised in the infographic below. A lot of trial and error was involved in the making of this project, but it all worked out well in the end. We hope you enjoy the craft behind the music video even though the music is not for everybody 😉

    PiWall_Infographic

    You can follow Spiegelbilder Studio on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if you enjoyed the music video, be sure to follow STRANDKØNZERT too.

    Website: LINK