The mbedGC is an open source video game console based around the mbed microcontroller. It is intended for hobbyists, students and engineers interested in developing video games. The game console was developed as a senior design project by a team of 5 electrical and computer engineering students from Florida International University.
The mbedGC is an expansion board and a framework for the mbed microcontroller. It gives the mbed the ability to produce audio & video on a television screen. The framework is freely available and it allows anyone to create their own video games using the mbedGC.
The initial release of the first video game for the mbedGC. Mbed uses an online compiler and it contains a built-in software repository where the Snake game code resides.
These are the EagleCAD files for the latest version of the mbedGC. The mbed EagleCAD part used in the project was designed by Mohammad Yousry and can be found here.
The team was given 2 semesters (8 months) to complete the senior design project. The first semester was spent identifying what components were required for the project and also developing a NTSC video algorithm. The result was the mbedGC prototype. The next step was to design the prototype in EagleCAD and also add other important features such as video game controllers. The result was the mbedGC version 1.0. There were issues with this board. A few components connected incorrectly and had to be rewired. Updates were made to the EagleCAD design and the device was made much smaller. The final result was mbedGC version 1.1.
mbedGC Prototype
mbedGC version 1.0
mbedGC version 1.1
The first video game developed for the mbedGC was Snake. It is based on the custom mbedGC Framework.
Watch the video to see the game console in action!
The mbedGC framework, hardware and documentation are licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.