Part of The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009
Fun, games and entertainment – These open source hardware projects that are more fun than anything else, from net connect set top boxes to fun games (and gaming systems) you can make yourself.
“Simon-like” Electronic Game Kit
Originally designed for the Maker Faire by Grand Idea Studio, the Build Your Own Electronic Game Kit is a custom-created kit intended to introduce you to the world of electronics and soldering. When successfully assembled, the kit becomes a version of the popular memory game, Simon, with a few optional twists, including no LEDs, no sound, reverse order, and fast play.
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Game of Life
In 1970, John Conway came up with a 1-player game called Game of Life. The Game of Life is a mathematical game that simulates ‘colonies’ that grow or die based on how crowded or lonely they are and is known for the way it creates a beautiful organic display out of randomness. Here is a design for a simple electronic project that plays Conway’s Game of Life. Make one kit and keep it on your desk, or attach multiple kit modules together to create a large display.
Price: $15.50
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Buy one @ Maker Shed
Digg button
Make your very own social bookmarking tool without the hassles of running a webserver. This kit contains the PCB and all the electronic parts for a Digg Button, including 2 batteries.
Price: $15.00
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Drawdio
Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It’s great project for beginners: An easy soldering kit with instant gratification. Essentially, its a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper.
Price: $17.50
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Buy one @ Maker Shed
Metro-Gnome
The Metro-Gnome is a basic digital metronome used to keep time during music practice. This is a basic kit that goes together in 15-20 minutes for people learning to solder, and 5-10 minutes for those with a bit of experience.
Price: $14.95
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Meggy Jr PRB
Meggy Jr RGB is a kit from the talented scientists at Evil Mad Scientists (who are actually quite nice and friendly) designed as a platform to develop handheld pixel games. It’s based around a fully addressable 8×8 RGB LED matrix display, and features six big fat buttons for comfy game play. The kit is driven by an ATmega168 microcontroller, and you can write your own games or otherwise control it through the Arduino development environment by simply plugging in an FTDI cable. Meggy Jr is fast, programmable, open source and hackable.
Price: $75.00
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Buy one @ Maker Shed
Mignonette Kit
Mignonette is a do-it-yourself electronic game console to learn about soldering, microcontrollers, and game programming. Inspired by the Mignon Game Kit that was done in Germany several years ago. Extended upon their wonderfully simple design to include a bicolor display, as well as a completely new software library for making games.
Price: $34.95
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Buy one @ Maker Shed
Minimig
Minimig (short for Mini Amiga) is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Price: Various
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Simon Game
This is a good demo board for our button pads, DC to DC step up, LEDs, battery holders, buzzer, pseudo-random number generator for game sequence, etc.
Price: $24.95
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Terror-Min
This is Terror-Min, the wonderful toy to annoy and bring terror to the most patient parents. It’s a simple kit based on the principals of a Theremin that makes noise based on how the user interacts with the light sensor. This is a great kit that goes together quickly and easily for those who are just beginning how to learn to solder.
Price: $9.95
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Ybox set top box
The YBox2 is a DIY networked set-top box. Connect it to your TV and you can design customized content to be delivered direct from the Internet. This project is great for people who want a new platform to experiment with. The video and Internet cores are ready to go and easy to work with.
Price: $75.00
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Uzebox
The Uzebox is a fully open-source, DIY 8-bit game console. It is designed specifically for people who know a little bit of programming to expand into designing and creating their own video games and demos. A full-featured core runs in the background and does all the video and audio processing so that your code stays clean and easy to understand.
Price: $70.00
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