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Simon Game

Replacement: While we're no longer carrying this as a pre-built item, we will continue to sell the Simon PTH soldering kit as well as the SMD soldering kit. This page is for reference only.

Looking for an application for the button pads, we ultimately settled on re-creating this classic. It blinks. It makes a lot of noise. And it's guaranteed to suck you away from doing any real work.

This is a good demo board for our button pads, DC to DC step up, LEDs, battery holders, buzzer, pseudo-random number generator for game sequence, etc. The firmware is available below as well as schematics to see how we did it. Buy the board for a quick toy or re-write the code to create mega-Simon. Please note the board comes fully assembled as shown, tested, and includes an all important Sound On/Off switch. Battery not included - a single AA will power Simon for 15-20 hours. See our tutorials for more information about programming the ATmega8.

**Note: **We've updated the processor to an ATmega328, and loaded it with the Arduino Pro Mini bootloader! Not much has changed functionally; but, using an FTDI Basic Breakout Board, you can now load your own program via the Arduino IDE.

****](http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/IC/74HC4511.pdf)Software:


Comments

Looking for answers to technical questions?

We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.

  • Jiri / about 16 years ago / 2

    Great Toy not for kids only ! But there is not maintained the doubleclick of keyboard in SW. There is no wait delay after a key-press, what causes accidental doubleclick, this is represented as a wrong key-press. This is very important, otherwise the game is unusefull !

    • promethean / about 14 years ago / 1

      Sure, it's overkill as far as processing power & features go, but with the ubiquity of the arduino platform and programming tools, it's a decent choice to allow more people access to hack it, customizing the firmware with tools they're already familiar with.

  • s-p-e-x / about 14 years ago / 1

    I'm proud to say that with your tutorial and advice and some equipment from your store I was able to assemble this whole kit, my first SMD project!
    But it appears that the actual Simon code would require an ISP, which I don't have and haven't yet needed for any of my Arduinos.
    Is actual Simon game available for the Arduino Processing IDE?
    Or will I now have to embark on re-purposing another Arduino as an ISP?

    • RobertC. / about 14 years ago / 1

      It has an Arduino bootloader and a spot for an FTDI.

      • bsx / about 13 years ago * / 1

        Is the arduino code for the simon game available, or is that avr-c only? --- strike that, found it here: http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/203

      • s-p-e-x / about 14 years ago / 1

        Nope, that didn't work.
        I did follow the recently posted tutorial, though and used an Arduino as an ISP and now it works perfectly.

  • Snelly / about 14 years ago / 1

    Could you power the XBee via the XBee explorer? This could make a great little wireless remote control but I wonder about battery life going 1.5V -> 5V -> 3.5V.

  • LighTer / about 14 years ago / 1

    Is it me or are the RXI and TXO connections from the "Simon Game" inverted when compared to the "FTDI Basic Breakout Board". Is that a misprint on the PCB? Is it safe to use the breakout borad to connect?

    • SomeGuy123 / about 13 years ago * / 1

      They are inverted intentionally. TX means transmit and RX means receive. When dealing with UART, RX goes to TX.

  • blink4jona / about 14 years ago / 1

    I have the new old version, err.... the one before this one with a 168. Can I upload the arduino bootloader to it? I bought an AVR dragon and was going to try to modify the firmware to debounce the buttons but I could never get it to connect-and I gave up. If I could upload the arduino bootloader it would make modifying the firmware that much easier. Good reason to make another go at getting the dragon to work.

  • unebonnevie / about 14 years ago / 1

    Sad to see that this game uses the ATMEGA168, such a waste and costly thing for customers. I created my own with an ATTINY24 and plenty of features.

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