Motivation

Motivation

            While it’s true that toys and gaming consoles have been becoming more and more sophisticated, we can all agree that some of the more “retro” toys are still the best. While the Xbox 360, PS3 or the Nintendo Wii may be today’s gaming standards, back in the days when we were in elementary school, the Gameboy Color ruled supreme: we wasted so many hours of our childhood on that portable gaming device. It was because of those fond memories that we decided that we wanted to do something with the Gameboy Color.

            What could we use to control using the Gameboy Colors? Well, we decided that in honor of the 5^th generation of Pokemon Black and White games that just came out, combined with the fact that the Pokemon games were the games that we probably wasted the most time on the Gameboy Color, we decided that we would have a Pokemon theme, and use Gameboy Colors to control “Pokemons” (which would be represented by Polulu 3Pi robots), and have them fight each other, just like in the Pokemon games.

Materials

·         2 Pololu 3Pi Robots with Attachment Breadboard

·         1 Orangutan USB programmer

·         AVR Studio 4, the IDE for the Polulu robot

·         Polulu AVR Library 101104

·         2 GameBoy Colors

·         4 Fireflys 2_2

·         1 Firefly Programmer’s Pad with 2 ribbon cables

·         Nano-RK library

·         2 Rumble Packs

·         13 LEDs

·         Various resistors, wires, and female-female headers

·         Soldering equipment

·         Several AA and AAA batteries

·         Aesthetics

o   Erasers to attach to Robot’s Fireflys to prevent unacceptable contact such as short-circuiting.

o   Blue shower cap for Tentacruel

o   Orange gift ribbon and wrapping paper for Charizard