Actually (OzzieGerff) had us at “LEGO”. But then he did it completely differently and built a completely mechanical, almost 100% LEGO version of SnakeAnd it’s just as cool as it sounds.
However, it’s a little hard to understand how this whole thing works, which has been in the works for some time, but we’ll try to summarize it as best we can. The most important aspect of this build is that there are no electronics at all – everything is done with mechanical linkages, with some pneumatic components from Technics and a couple of electric motors providing the necessary momentum. The three main components are the input section, which consists of a two-axis joystick, a tail buffer that tracks the length of the snake’s tail as the game progresses, and the largest component, the 16×16 display.
The joystick translates the user’s inputs into pneumatic signals that are passed through a mechanical filter unit that prevents the snake’s head from flexing. The filtered inputs then go to the screen reader, a complex device that checks the status of a particular pixel on the display and determines the status of the snake’s head. If he touches a snake pixel, it’s game over. If he hits an empty pixel, the snake’s head moves one, eventually decreasing by one pixel, while a food pixel increases the snake’s length.
Keeping track of the snake’s length is the job of the buffer, which uses Technics tank tracks and levers. Setting a one is done by flipping the lever to one side as it passes under the writing head; a reading head further down the chain detects which way the lever is flipped and converts this into a pneumatic signal. The buffer has four channels, one for each possible direction the snake’s head could move. The signals drive a paperless recorder, which moves a pyramid-shaped plunger along a series of pushrods that flip the corresponding pixel on the display to show the correct symbol. Simple in itself? No, but the video below will make things much clearer.
It doesn’t look like (Ozzie) is quite done with this game, as he isn’t showing any real gameplay yet. We’d love to see and hear that – we suspect it will make quite a bit of noise. We’ll be on the lookout for it, but while we wait, check out this rope braiding machine or watch Lego break steel.
Many thanks to (Hari Wiguna) for discovering this for us.
