One interesting part of the event are tool-assisted speedruns, or TAS, which use hardware pre-programmed to play a video game with super-human abilities. For example this TAS Pokemon Red run exploited memory overflow bugs to reprogram the game to display Twitch.tv chat that was sent over the controller port. Typically hardware like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino are used to build these TAS devices as they’re well suited for connecting to the controller port of an old video game system.
This year the TAS speedruns are scheduled at the very end of the SGDQ event on Saturday August 1st and include classic games like Mega Man, Sonic Advance, and Ikaruga. It looks like it will be a great event, good luck to the speedrunners and TAS robot!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
