Go to any arcade and it ought to shortly turn out to be apparent that air hockey is without doubt one of the hottest video games accessible. One thing in regards to the fast-paced, knuckle-bruising gameplay is irresistible to adults and youngsters alike. And since air hockey tables are huge and heavy, few folks have the means to maintain them at house. That’s why Downing constructed a miniature air hockey desk to play together with his youngsters. However he didn’t cease there, as a result of his DIY mini air hockey desk additionally runs Doom.
This air hockey desk is pretty small at about three ft lengthy and two ft huge. However it doesn’t lack options and consists of every little thing you’d anticipate to see on an actual air hockey desk — and extra.
An important function of an air hockey desk to is the air cushion that helps the pucks skim together with little or no friction. This works a bit like a hovercraft in reverse. Pumps contained in the desk push air via many holes within the desk’s floor and that steady circulation lifts the puck. On this case, Downing used a pair of laptop-style blowers which might be able to offering a mixed 80 CFM of air circulation. Energy comes from a PC ATX energy provide.
Downing works at a print store and was in a position to make use of their CNC router to manufacture the desk. That has an underlying composite aluminum help floor, an acrylic spacer for the LED lighting, a translucent acrylic high floor, and outer partitions manufactured from a skim-foam composite materials referred to as KömaCel. The scoreboard enclosure, its helps, and the objectives have been all 3D-printed.
This desk incorporates each a Raspberry Pi 2 Mannequin B single-board pc (SBC) and a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller improvement board. The Pico controls the LEDs, whereas the SBC feeds composite video to the 2 scoreboard screens. It additionally displays infrared break beam sensors within the objectives to detect the puck.
As a result of Downing included a Raspberry Pi SBC, he can run emulators to play video games like Doom. That may have been fascinating sufficient if it simply displayed the graphics on the scoreboard screens. However Downing took it a step additional and fed the composite video to the Pico so it might show these graphics on the desk floor utilizing the 600 embedded LEDs. The decision is extremely low, however it’s fascinating to see bitmap sprites scaled all the way down to only a few RGB LEDs.
We haven’t checked with Guinness, however we’re comfortable to imagine that that is the primary miniature air hockey desk to run Doom.
