Conway's Life on Arduino

This video shows Conway's "Life" running on an Arduino connected to an 8x8 LED matrix. Runs at about 10 generations a second before optimization. At the end of the video it stumbles into quite an interesting repeating pattern.

See http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/DirectDriveLEDMatrix for the code and more.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• arduino
• led
• matrix
• Life
• electronics
• gadget

[daewootech]

are you using any resistors?

[andrewh2000]

@daewootech No, but I should have. It didn't blow up but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

[joelhmck]

Nicely done!. What kind of breadboard is that? I like how wide it is to accomodate the led matrix.

[andrewh2000]

@joelhmck Just a cheap one from Maplins (electronics shop in the UK like Radio Shack). I like the binding posts for power connections. And yes, it is quite big which helps.

[Objectivityiskey]

I am using a atmega 328, and the frequencylib2 won't work with this chip for me. Do you need this lib, or can another be substituted that is compatible with the 328? Please contact me through my youtube account. Thanks!

[andrewh2000]

@Objectivityiskey Using the 328 shouldn't make any difference - it's more likely to be the version of the Arduino IDE that you're using that's the problem.

[Glamisfool105]

So i am going to try to get the code working without errors by uploading the version of arduino that this code was created in... does anyone know what version was available in Feb 2008?

[dragos93F]

Hy! I have this error "29: error: FrequencyTimer2.h: No such file or directory In function 'void setup()':". I don't now how to use library "frequencytimer2". Can you tell me how to do this?

[andrewh2000]

Yes. I set a density variable in my setup routine, usually to 50 so that roughly half the LEds are lit at the start. See the video description for the code.

[bilzoo2000]

so, does it just randomly choose the starting alive dots?