Homemade Tetris device on a PIC microcontroller. IR communication with Philips remote control.
This is a project started and finished shortly before obtaining my Master's Degree in education of mathematics and computer science. With only cheap parts from local shops, very poor PIC programmator, a display without instructions and old Philips remote control, process of making Tetris on a PIC mc was a major challenge. For starters, I had very little experience with melding, so there were a lot of rejected boards at first, along with too much smoke in my home and clothes. Second challenge was display that had no instructions. I did manage to find some general info on chinese manufacturer's website, but mostly I finally got display working properly by long hours of experimentation and blind luck. Final challenge was the mc programmator was too old, it could only be connected to an old computer we kept for my parents in the kitchen, while the software could be run only on my computer, from my room. So compiling and building meant walking from my room to kitchen (a lot) and just being patient about it. I have the device still in my posession, it is almost a decade old, but still works! From time to time there are some problems with wirings, but I avoid reparation, as it would mean long hours of investigating wire connections - so I prefer to just wiggle the wires a bit randomly until it works again - horrible, I know!
A short demonstration of me playing on my Tetris machine can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TQ3UTt3WZ6Y