Various Projects I Have Worked On

These are some of the projects I have worked on. Below are write-ups on them.

Be sure to check out the Downloads page -- it has design files for some of my projects!

Arcade-Related

Project Name:	Picture:	Write-up:	Brief Description:	Misc.
PERISCOPE, a TTL arcade game.		How a 14/15-year-old designed a TTL arcade game.	I designed / built this arcade game when I was 14-15. I logged about 300 hours on it. (297, to be exact.) It cost more than $2,300 to build. It has no CPU, and about 1.75Kbits in PROM memory!	Designed & built during 2017-2018
Kincaid Arcade Vector Graphics Card		How I, as a 16-17 year old, designed a vector arcade game.	I designed this as a 16-17 year old. I wanted to design my own Vector system from the ground up. This graphics card was meant to go with a custom-designed TTL processor that would control the game. Unfortunately, after spending a total of 326 hours and 10 minutes on the graphics card, I realized I just wasn't going to have time to design a processor and write a program for it in the remaining year I had before college. I hope to revisit and finish this project after that...	Designed & built during 2019-2020
The Golden Spike Pinball Machine		How a 15-18-year-old spent 2½ years and 846 hours building a pinball machine	I designed & built this pinball machine from the ages of 15 to 18. You could say that this pinball machine is my life's work (so far). I have invested over 846 hours of work into it over a span of 2½ years. Fast facts: Invested more than 846 hours over 2.5 years Designed 4 playfield revisions Designed 4 custom circuit boards Wrote all of the 298 pages of code by myself Ran over 500 feet of wire in the cabinet Designed more than 26 unique 3d-printed parts Designed and built everything except for the art; which my Dad did. Learned how to use a CNC machine	Designed & built during 2018-2021
Garden Of Eden Pinball Machine		How an 11-year old built a full-size pinball machine.	I designed / built this pinball machine when I was 11-12. I spent over 500 hours on it. It cost over $5,000 to build, with about $650 of it in shipping costs alone. It houses 3 Arduinos and over 500 feet of wire. I have not topped this project in WOW-Factor yet, probably because of the combination of difficulty and young age...	Designed & built during 2014-2015
Cloning Atari's Space Race		Cloning Space Race	Cloning Space Race is getting very annoying. I swear, it should be done by now. It is almost completely working now. The asteroids move way too fast, and the sound might have an issue (or may not be sufficiently amplified). The 555 in the coin circuit is not behaving like its datasheet indicates, for some reason. I have concluded that the asteroid circuits in the rev-F manual have errors. I have soldered them up EXACTLY the way they should be. I have even corrected errors with inverted and noninverted signals elsewhere. Obviously, Adam Smith of the DICE emulator figured out what was wrong for making DICE. If anyone who knows him can have him contact me, I'd be most appreciative. I want to know what issues he found in the asteroid circuits. It may not look like it, but there is ~400 feet of wire on that circuit board and wiring harness (not pictured). x4 100-foot spools of wire were used -- 1/2 red, 1/2 black, and 3 green.	I worked on soldering this up during 2018 and resumed debugging it in 2020. I worked on it a bit more over Christmas break 2021.
Cloning Atari's PONG		Back when I cloned Pong.	I cloned Atari's PONG back when I was 11. It... looked like PONG. It had a bunch of problems that I never fixed. Knowing more about TTL, I think I know what I did wrong.	2015?

Arduino Stuff

Project Name:	Picture:	Write-up:	Brief Description:	Misc.
The Pocket Encouragement Device	I know, the bottom one should say John 6:37.	Write-up:	I know we all feel discouraged at times, so I designed a device that would provide Biblical encouragement at the press of a button. I basically filled up the ATMEGA328P's memory with 79 bible passages. (With 4 bytes left over...) I designed and built this when I was 15.	Designed & built during 2018
A Perler Bead Sorter			In the last 2 weeks of school, it was announced that we were going to make little find-it like things, and we were going to use perler beads to fill them. Someone apparently thought it was a good idea to buy 132,000 unsorted beads. (6 jars of 22,000!) It didn't occur to them that it would take 2+ weeks to sort them... Ahh... how did that phrase go... Penny wise but Pound foolish? I did not want to spend all of my science classes (yes, science class...) sorting those miniscule, 38-color beads. So I designed a bead sorter. I went through 2 designs, the second one worked, but it broke after sorting 3 black beads. If only I had my 3d-printer back then...	Designed & built in 2017
My 8x8x8 RGB led cube.			This project had several firsts for me: First major project I've done entirely by myself. First project involving TTL. (24 SN74595 shift registers.) First project I had to order components in multiples of 100. First project I had to design and order circuit boards for. First project to exceede 50 pages of Arduino code. I built this when I was 12-13 It cost about $1,500 to build, and I spent about 200 hours on it.	Designed & built during 2016-2017
Autonomous Rover			A little rover I built for school with the purpose of navigating mazes. First major project I did. It had several infra-red sensors to make sure that it did not hit any obstacles. Kinda funny when you think that my school project next year was a full-sized pinball machine! While it may seem unimpressive, keep in mind that I did this when I was just 10 years old!	Built during 2013-2014

Nerf Blasters

Project Name:	Picture:	Write-up:	Brief Description:	Misc.
Kincaid Arcade Type-001 MK-2 "Sparrow"		Write-up:	A small pistol Nerf blaster designed to learn how to use Solidworks.	Designed in the Fall semester of 2021

Other

Project Name:	Picture:	Write-up:	Brief Description:	Misc.
My Physics Mousetrap Cars: El Presidente and The Contingency	El Presidente The Contingency		Everybody's had to take Physics in High School at some point. And everybody's had to make a mousetrap car. This should've been a 30 minute project, but I wanted to make mine entirely 3d printed, so I spent 40+ hours designing parts. El Presidente was a flop because it weighed too much, but its modular design allowed me to remove enough gearbox sections for it to go 5 meters. I loosely based the design around the Russian Tzar Tank. At least it won "most unique design"! The Contingency was the design that I entered to compete. It tied for 2nd place for distance!	Designed October-November of 2019
Electric Go-Kart			This project was a flop. The goal was to learn how to use a CNC machine, but my Dad didn't finish building his CNC machine before the end of the school year, so I had to hand-carve something. We all know how bad I am with art (I seem to be limited to curves, trapezoids and ovals,) and with such a lack of time to finish it, I failed miserably.	On the bright side, I am pretty good with advertising my projects, so I still managed to wow everyone at the exposition anyway. Designed and built 2017-2018

This page was last updated 1/5/2022

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