Skip to content

Category:Vector Display

Vector display overview

One of my more fun projects was developing the r2r hardware and software library to turn oscilloscopes into XY displays. I really like the look of the vector monitor lines and hope to redo this with analog line drawing hardware sometime. I've since written Space Rocks, an Asteroids inspired game, and made a Twitter oscilloscope with the hardware and software. Read on for details about how vector displays work...

Vector displays with MAME

These are the Atari vector games that I've successfully emulated with MAME and displayed on a vector display, such as the Vectrex or Tek 1720. Read on for more details...

Vectrex

I've converted a Vectrex to an Vector display and am driving it with a Teensy 3 plus an SPI DAC. Using a modified version of MAME, I'm able to write the vectors to the Teensy over USB, which generates 12-bit lines using Bresenham's line algorithm and DMA to transfer the points to the DAC. This provides a nearly glitch free way to display the games and artwork. Read on for more details...

Tektronix 1720

The Tektronix 1720 vectorscopes are available for 20-50 on eBay since most TV stations are decomissioning all of their analog NTSC gear. It is a cheaper alternative to the Vectrex for art projects or a compact MAME display, although the beam is not quite as sharp. Read on for more details...

Twitter oscilloscope

This 1940's Cathode-Ray oscilloscope was converted to a vector display and to test out my font rendering/rotation it was configured to search Twitter for "I" and display the most narcissistic tweets it found. The font very fast to draw and was inspired by Asteroids. Read on for more details...

Laser projection

I've been working on adapting my Vector display code to run on an RGB laser projector with mirror galvos. Read on for more details...

Space Rocks

For the 2013 Interactive Show I wrote an Asteroids inspired game called "Space Rocks". This 1940's Cathode-ray oscillograph was used as a XY monitor driven by my Teensy + dual R2R vector display driver. A cast-off 1980s IBM analog joystick was wired into a Teensy's analog input pins for control. Read on for more details...


List of pages



Last update: November 8, 2020