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Conway's Game of Life, in real life

328 points by surprisetalk

by Nevermark

1 subcomments

This is fantastic.
I happen to own a physical pong table. Everyone loves it. [0] There is something magical about material and only-does-one-thing instantiations of digital things.
——
I am really looking forward to a flat table top screen consisting of millions of magnetically-controlled vertical-extruding rod pixels, with actual color controlled pixels along their length. For an amazing table display/extrusion of D&D dungeons and terrain, for miniatures.
A little sensor ability, and when the extrusion "scrolls" laterally, it could create little lips that move the miniatures too, so they stay "in place". And move NPCs around at the DMs direction. Now turn of the room lights, and use the light pixels not just for color, but for lighting effects like wall lamps flickering, add spooky position-distributed sounds...
That has to be coming soon, right?
Some part of me wants to describe it Claude, iterate, and say "Now polish that design, economically optimize the parts, link in the supply chain, and ship me the first review unit." That has to be coming soon, right?
The lines separating planes of reality, they are a blurring, quickly.
——
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Ymt9BAq5s

by exolab

1 subcomments

> I figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the project and then multiplied that by 10.
I like the way you think.

by kangalioo

2 subcomments

A much cheaper way might have been to buy a couple of Novation Launchpads. 8x8 full RGB tactile buttons for 90€, MIDI-controllable. Four of those next to another for 16x16 at 360€ plus a little bit for cables and controller comes out at 1/3 the price

by mittermayr

5 subcomments

Totally off-topic, and I may be wrong, but I immediately loved the non-LLM writing-style and felt glued to the content just through the writing alone. It's getting rare.

by bawolff

0 subcomment

> To bring the idea to life, I started with rigorous budgeting: I figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the project and then multiplied that by 10.
Lol, this is the way to do hobbies

by eps

0 subcomment

I saw one in a computer museum in Switzerland. It was a much larger field, it was just large orange LEDs (or were they tubes?), but it also cycled between a dozen of different cell automata games. Something about being able to see individual "pixels" made it really mesmerizing.

by alnwlsn

0 subcomment

Wow, in switches alone this would cost me $1200! Which actually isn't that bad for a one off-like this with easily available components - I've seen worse. You can of course take your chances with Aliexpress Specials but be warned: some of those cheap switches are cheap switches (sometimes, they're barely even switches). And you won't be getting them inside of 2 weeks.
I think I would have tried mechanical keyboarding switches that can take an LED and a clear keycap. Not really the same effect, but you could probably have gotten out to 24x24 for the same price.

by kanapala

0 subcomment

Technology Will Save Us, from a brighter past, produced the Arcade Coder as their swan song. It had 12×12 tactile buttons with color leds inside, a companion app to program it with scratch like code blocks, and interactive tutorials. It's ESP32 based. There's an effort to continue it's life, ast the app was on the app store for a brief time. https://github.com/padraigfl/twsu-arcade-coder-esp32

by PetitPrince

0 subcomment

My Alma matter has a jumbo version of this, in which the game if life is one of several available mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWall

by cjfd

3 subcomments

When I was a teenager, I read a book about assembly language for the commodore and implemented the game of life in a really simple way. I just used the text screen. To switch on a cell, I would put an asterisk ('*') in it. Then I could run my machine code program and it would evolve according to the rules of the game of life.

by satiated_grue

0 subcomment

This would be something neat to do with a core memory array, just like this but bigger:
https://www.core64.io/

by alexb_

0 subcomment

This isn't what this is about, but I wonder if anyone has created a fully mechanized version of Conway's Game of Life. The fact that you only have to follow 4 rules, and each cell only needs to observe its neighbors to follow those rules, makes me wonder if it's possible to track these things mechanically. I unfortunately don't know enough about mechanical engineering to do such a thing.

by self_awareness

2 subcomments

That's not a "physical" version of game of life -- that's a digital version, like every version, but with bigger pixels.

by mastermedo

0 subcomment

A thousand bucks for 17x17 touchscreen. Add a painting frame, hang it on the wall, and you made yourself amazing art for cheap.

by vunderba

1 subcomments

Nice. A friend of mine just picked up a Linnstrument, and I’m very tempted to create a Conway’s Game of Life-based musical visualization for it.
https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument

by smcameron

0 subcomment

Something like those switches might be made very cheaply with a 3D printer, possibly a laser cutter, some transparent or semitransparent acrylic sheet, tactile switches and some LEDs. I designed a cheapo replacement for $50 tellite switches and got the price down to about $0.60 Not quite the same, as these are a lot bigger, and getting things down to the desired size might be troublesome. Anyway, here's a little video of my fake cheapo tellite switches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaenrgPVCjc

by MrGilbert

1 subcomments

I wonder if going for keyboard switches with RGB could bring the price down, if you then either print the keycaps yourself, our use a 3d printing service. 23 Cherry MX switches cost 20€, that‘s roughly 260€ for a 17x17 matrix.

by Cthulhu_

0 subcomment

I love this and would love to see it on a wall at our office or something like that. Maybe there's smaller/cheaper led/switches that would work in a handheld version.

by sleepybrett

0 subcomment

It's not edge to edge, though maybe if you built your own silicon overlay you could make it edge to edge.. but adafruit sells these tileable pcbs and silicon overlays with capacitive buttons: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3954

by slow_typist

1 subcomments

Très cool.
A grid of capacitive touch sensors could be printed directly on the pcb, bringing down costs by a degree of magnitude. Real switches are much more satisfying though.

by Melraidin

1 subcomments

> Can it be made for less?
Would you be able to use the LEDs as light sensors and eliminate the switch component entirely? Maybe a tubular shield over each LED so it doesn't interact with others around it then covering it with your finger could be read as toggling the state?

by galaxyLogic

4 subcomments

I wonder is there a version GoL where every bit on a computer-display or LCD TV is one cell? How does it look?

by imglorp

0 subcomment

Someone's senior project was an EEPROM based life in discrete logic and a bunch of LEDs. There was no CPU; the ROM served as a state machine. I wish I knew more about it now; I'm not sure how it latched state.

by possiblydrunk

0 subcomment

Nicely done! Scale matters. If you make something big enough relative to its expected size, it will impress and captivate, even if it's simple. General observation, not that the construction here was by any means simple.

by ge96

0 subcomment

Damn around $900 just for the switches, I feel it, little project costing a lot but it's fun
In my case a $300 camera that produces worse photos than an old flagship $50 camera from eBay

by CJefferson

4 subcomments

I've always wanted something like this board, buttons which can light up (preferably a few colours), to use to make games. Anyone ever found such a board which is hackable / programmable?

by Tepix

0 subcomment

Lovely project indeed. If you want to build your own: I found a whole bunch of much cheaper illuminated switches on AliExpress within minutes.

by sleepybrett

0 subcomment

In the seatac airport there used to be a big 'life wall' they did their switches w/ capacitive metal disks

by lproven

0 subcomment

This is fantastic, but there's no way I am taking the time to build one, and the cost is a little frightening...

by Traubenfuchs

1 subcomments

Would be interesting to do this with people and observe the inevitable mistakes they make.
Now that would be simulating life witg life.

by fwipsy

1 subcomments

I don't want to build this or pay for it, but I really want to mess with it for an hour.

by rojoroboto

0 subcomment

I bet that the author would really get a kick out of the T2 Tile Project.

by mvrckhckr

0 subcomment

Great idea and execution. I like your thinking.

by jFriedensreich

1 subcomments

how is this real life more than a monitor, its just bigger pixels. i was expecting programmable live cells or something mechanical

by mkirsten

0 subcomment

It is beautiful

by mohamedkoubaa

0 subcomment

Good old analog computers

by meindnoch

0 subcomment

Eh. I thought they had somehow created a physical realization of Conway's Game of Life.

by irenetusuq

0 subcomment

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by Lliora

0 subcomment

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by zuiko_39182

0 subcomment

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by gethwhunter34

0 subcomment

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by Iamkkdasari74

0 subcomment

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by shawoodle65

0 subcomment

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by andysalmela34

0 subcomment

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