The Yilane Systems YS-210 is a compact driver circuit which runs the Game of Life cellular automaton on an 8x8 LED matrix. The Game of Life was developed by the mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970, and is without question the iconic example of cellular automata. The game is carried out on a grid of cells, and the rules are simple:
-Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies from underpopulation.
-Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies from overcrowding.
-Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.
-Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell.
The YS-210 runs Conway's Game of Life on a matrix of 64 LEDs, using an initial seed pattern supplied by the user. Unlike other such devices, the YS-210 allows the user to edit the pattern used for the initial state of the game directly, without any extra hardware, through the use of buttons installed around the device's edge. The speed at which the simulation runs, and the number of cycles before a reset, can also be set by the user. Patterns and other settings are stored in nonvolatile Flash memory, and are retained when power is removed from the device.
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