GRID-Arcade

This is the GRID (Gaming Retro Interactive Device), my fun hobby project to create a custom arcade box.

What can it do?

First it welcomes the player:

Then you can select a program from the menu:

You can play a Maze escape game:

You can fly around as a Boid (digital bird):

You can adjust the input calibration, if something feels off:

Hardware

The display is a 32x32 RGB LED matrix connected with an Adafruit Metro M0 (SAMD21) equipped with a Adafruit RGB Matrix Shield. The unit is controlled by a PS2 Joystick hooked up to the Metro.

Everything is housed in a custom unit built in collaboration with my friend Herman Tabunganua.

The Arduino IDE was used to compile and program the GRID software to the Adafruit MCU.

Software

The GRID arcade can also be run as a desktop emulation. The software for each target is identical, to enable hardware-independent development and debugging.

The software emulation uses the SDL library on a fixed-step timing loop to simulate the GRID logic and display. All the programs in GRID on hardware are available on the emulation. The main difference is that SDL displays the pixels as blocks. See screenshots below for how the emulation looks:

In addition, an "LED-mode" switch (by pressing the L key) can be activated for a more faithful look.

Running the GRID emulation

The emulation uses a simple Makefile with debug-friendly targets.

Prereqs

• SDL2 development headers and libs
  • Linux: sudo apt install libsdl2-dev (or use sdl2-config / pkg-config)
• g++ with C++17

Targets

• make
  Release-ish build (O2).

• make DEBUG=1 or make debug
  Debug build with symbols, AddressSanitizer, and -DDEBUG.
  Flags include: -g -O0 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fsanitize=address.

• make run
  Build then run ./build/grid.

• make run-debug
  Build with DEBUG=1 then run.

• make clean
  Remove the build/ folder.

Notes

• SDL flags are discovered via pkg-config sdl2 or fall back to sdl2-config.
• On debug builds, ASan is enabled for both compile and link. If you need to disable leak reports temporarily:

ASAN_OPTIONS=detect_leaks=0 ./build/grid