Smallest CRT Tetris Arcade Machine?

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Here is a crazy and fun project with a miniature camera viewfinder. I obtained a CRT camera viewfinder with a screen size slightly smaller than a U.S. dime and I thought to myself: why not make the tinest CRT arcade machine ever? I programmed a PIC with Tetris code from Rickard's Electronic Projects page (link to Internet Archive as the original website no longer exists). The viewfinder simply has 5V, GND, video input, and other inputs for the REC light, etc. Only the first three connections were used, the viewfinder and the PIC game system shared the same 5V and GND source, the video for the viewfinder came from the PIC. A 7805 regulator was used to regulate the 9V battery power source to 5V for the game. Three buttons were created on the game for left, right, and rotate. I did not insert a fourth button to fire for the sake of simplicity. There is a button on the side of the game to reset the system.

Although, maybe a screen smaller than a U.S. dime would make it rather impossible to play Tetris, but I did not have any problems playing the game; the camera viewfinder has a quite crisp picture. Some folks may need to whip out a magnifying glass, however.

PIC16F84 files for download: pictetris.zip


The tetris arcade machine game is much smaller than it appears!



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