VGA Breakout With Arduino Uno

I have reproduced another classical game of the old school. This is the time of Breakout! The output runs on a VGA monitor, by means of a bare Arduino Uno and few other components. As usual, the goal is to avoid any special shield or supporting IC. The only needed components are one button, a potenziometer, few resistors and a DSUB15 connector.

You can see it running on this video.

I used Arduino IDE 1.6.4. and the VGAx library done by Smaffer and publish on GitHub here. This library allows to use four color with a resolution of 120 x 60 pixels, not many but enough for this retro-game. I optimized the graphic for a 4:3 VGA monitor, but it is ok for a wide screen one as well.

Step 1: Schematic, Code and an Example

To reproduce this game you need first to download the code (see at the bottom of this page).

Then you need the VGA libraries.

You can immediatly upload them on an Arduino Uno. If you do not have any error message, the program is supposed to work, thus you can begin with the hardware, i.e. with the connections shown un the schematic.

You need the following components:

1) an Arduino Uno Rev 3 - original or a clone, but original is better :-)

2) a DSUB15 connector (i.e. a standard 15 pin VGA one)

3) resistors: 2 x 68 Ohm; 2 x 470 Ohm and one of about 1 to 2 kOhm

4) one button

5) one linear potenziometer (10 kOhm is ok, for instance)

6) facultative - a speaker (not shown in the drawing). It has to be connected to pin A0.

You can use either a breadbord or a pc board (I did the latter, as shown in the example picture). You may also choose different color combinations, as described in the VGAx library link.

If you have done everything properly, you should be ready to play! Enjoy!