Space Invaders and Pong the Easy Way

In this Instructable I will show you how I set up by far the easiest way in my honest opinion to play these Retro games on an old TV.

Who remembers Space Invaders, I spent hours in my late teens playing this game at home and in bars as well, there was no Sky sports etc so Space Invaders or Asteroids and Pong was the way to go.

I was looking to add something like Space Invaders to a coffee table and started to look around for possible Arduino, Raspberry pi based projects that was until I stumbled on a site in the states called Nootropic design they have a product called Hack Vision, Let me show you how I set this up.

TV

Hackvision Space Invaders + Pong by Nootropic design

Plastic enclosures x 3no. Amazon

Momentary switches. Amazon

9v Centre positive power supply

RCA Cables,Video and mono audio.Amazon

Ethernet cable. Amazon

Soldering Iron and solder

Hot glue

I went onto the Nootropic web page and ordered a Hackvision assembled(there is a kit version) preloaded with Star Wars and Pong(There is an option for Asteroids as well) shipping to the UK was reasonable and delivery time was good.

On opening the pcb, its well made and has a number of buttons so you can play this right out of the box.

Here in the UK our TV system is PAL and there is mention of needing to Install a Resistor if it doesn't work I believe that this isn't needed anymore.

The Hackvision has an option to use a Nunchuck controller for space invaders, you can purchase a pre soldered connector for a small cost, I ordered this as well.

Onto the set up.

This is the point where I never read the Instructions correctly, the Hackvision runs on 9v power, I ordered a power supply off Amazon not thinking about the polarity of the centre pin, the one I ordered had centre negative!! D'oh!

The Hackvision is centre positive as clearly stated, too late, I had already powered it up, I wasn't getting anything at all out of the Hackvision and I tried it on 2 TV's zilch nothing, that's when I decided to contact Nootropic design and it was deemed I could have damaged the voltage regulator and possibly the Microprocessor.

The gave me instructions on how to test, which was using a Multimeter across the 5v and Ground on one of the paddle controller pins, It should read 5v this wasn't the case so I had an issue, they very kindly gave me the part number and where its position was on the pcb so I ordered this part, they cost next to nothing and if it works it will be worth it.

I snipped the old regulator off as close to the pcb as I could and applied solder to the 3 pins, I don't have much luck with de soldering the pin holes, so I cut down the 3 legs on the regulator and soldered it into position, plugging the correct 9v supply in it worked, and further connections to the initial TV that I wanted to use were made(Connections are Video and Audio) I had to buy the correct RCA cables) RCA to HDMI didn't work for me so it was the Yellow for Video and White for audio cable, its mono so the red cable is unused, I had to use a Scart RCA adapter as well.

I turned on the TV selected the correct input source and hey presto! we had Space Invaders and Pong on the TV, with sound!

I was made up!

I now need to make some different controllers as playing on the Hackvision buttons is cumbersome what with all the cables etc.

Making the controllers:

Nootropics have very cleverly added some pins onto the pcb so paddle controllers can be used for the pong game with 1 or 2 persons, this works with a 10K potentiometer and a Momentary button switch and also they have pins for a controller for the Space Invaders game, which in my case is just going to be Momentary buttons, 2 for left and right, another for firing and the 4th is to reset the program which takes you back to the menu, the fire button also selects the program, there are 2 more buttons on the PCB these are to toggle between Space Invaders or Pong and also for the letters if you want to add names to the scores, they are also up and down for the paddles in Pong.

Making the connections from the PCB to the Controller:

On the PCB I am going to solder the controller wires straight onto the pins as this will be a permanent feature of the coffee table, I used the angled pins for this and this is for playing Space Invaders, the cable I'm using is an old Ethernet cable, this cable has 4 pairs.

There is a reset button on the PCB, I shorted the pins on this to find out which pins I needed to solder the cables to to mirror this reset button on the controller.

The next job was to solder cables onto the pins needed for Ground and the 2 buttons for left right and the firing button, these will be mirrored onto the controller, D2 Left D3 Right, D10 is the firing button and GND I also soldered the cables onto D4 up and D5

To secure the cables in place to the back of the PCB I used some hot glue, not best practice but for this it will be fine, the pcb will not be seen.

I'm using small black plastic enclosures for the controller's, and some small push button momentary switches, I marked off on the enclosure where I wanted the buttons and again not to congest the controller box I place the left and right buttons on the rear of the box along with the up and down buttons and the the reset and firing buttons on the side, this felt ok ergonomically if that's the word.

I used a 6.5mm drill bit for the holes first making pilot holes with a 3mm drill, then 4.9mm and had to file these out a bit for a snug fit.

I soldered a tinned cable to one side of each D2, D3,D4,D5, D10 buttons this connects to the ground cable from the pcb as for the reset button the 2 cables from the reset button on the pcb were soldered onto this, then the cables from D2, D3,D4,D5 and D10 were soldered onto the relevant buttons, the 2 Cables from D4 and D5 were coiled and left in the enclosure, this completes the soldering for the Space Invaders and time to test.

Paddle controllers for Pong next, 1 or 2 players.

On the pcb there are pins for paddle control, Paddle A and Paddle B I will be using the same enclosures for these 2 controllers.

This next segment is copied and pasted from the Nootropic web site, you can use whichever colour cable you want as long as the pins correspond.

Solder wires to your button and potentiometer. The potentiometer has a connection to ground (black wire), 5V (red wire), and a connection for the analog voltage output (gray wire). The middle contact of the potentiometer is called the “wiper” and it is connected to the grey wire which will be used to read the position of the pot. Note which contacts that the ground and 5V wires are connected to — use the same connections as seen in this bottom view. The button has two contacts: one for the digital input (green), and one for ground. In this picture, I connected the ground wire to the ground connections on the potentiometers.

Ok so I know that you can get either Arduino or Raspberry pi retro for some of these games, but for me this was the easy option, and it utilises a TV rather than a Laptop/Desktop computer, fair enough there is some soldering to do if you want the controllers like I have in this set up.

There is a Controller for Space Invaders and Pong solo, and 2 Controllers for 2 player pong with potentiometers to move the paddles etc.

It was good to play Space Invaders again after so long, and with this set up you could make a bespoke Space Invaders Coffee table like my initial thinking or something along those lines.

Thanks for Looking.