THOTCON 0x8 Badge
tesserHack, a maze with no screen
A game console with no screen. The game, tesserHack, is a maze inside a cube. You steer with three knobs and read the maze from four colored lights.
Specs
- Event
- THOTCON 0x8, Chicago, May 4–5, 2017
- Game
- tesserHack
- Chip
- ATmega32U4, the same chip as the Arduino Leonardo
- Controls
- Three knobs
- Lights
- Four RGB NeoPixel LEDs
- Power
- Two CR2032 coin cells, micro USB
The game
The maze is an 8 × 8 × 8 cube and you're somewhere inside it. The left knob picks your layer, the middle knob moves you side to side, and the right knob moves you forward and back.
Four lights show what's next to you to the north, south, east, and west. White means the way is open. Purple is a portal up to the next layer. Orange is a key to collect. If all four go red, you've hit a wall and you start over.
Plug the badge into a computer and there's a second way to play. It opens a text console with a map view and a help menu.
Hacking it
Attendees who wanted to reprogram the badge found it had shipped without a bootloader. The first step was soldering on a six-pin header and burning one. After that it behaves like an Arduino Leonardo.
Who made it
- Game: Jay Margalus, Rudy Ristich, and Nathan Matteson.
- Hackaday credits the badge design to Jedha and the programming to John Wallis, both of Workshop 88.
Original write-ups and code
- Thotcon 0x8 Badge by Gigawatts, on Hackaday.io
- Hacking The Thotcon 0x8 Badge by John Baichtal, Hackaday