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As the name suggests, this project\u00a0is similar in design to the classic Space Invaders<\/a> game or (more similarly) the\u00a0\u200bCasio’s Number Invaders<\/a>\u00a0on the calculator. The idea behind the game is that different colored “invaders” start marching down the LED strip and you have to fire missiles that match the color of the oncoming invader.\u00a0Naturally, as you successfully destroy more of the attackers, the faster they come towards your base. Luckily, we do get a nice bonus if we successfully destroy enough of them\u00a0in a row\u00a0\u2014 a super shot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My particular setup uses a set of 30 self-addressable\u00a0WS2812 LEDs<\/a>\u00a0whose weather-proof shielding is perfect for diffusing each of the LEDs. It also utilizes\u00a0a chipKIT uC32<\/a> microcontroller running Marshall<\/a>‘s PICxel library<\/a>,\u00a0allowing it to easily control all 30 LEDs (or 900 of them<\/a>) with plenty of processing power to spare.<\/p>\n To cycle between each of the missile color options and fire the missile once it was ready, I used a PmodENC<\/a> and its associated library so that my code “catches” all of the rotations of the encoder shaft.<\/p>\n So, what do you think? Could you survive the onslaught against the color invaders?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can check out my YouTube video showing off some of this project in the video below:<\/p>\n![\"WS2812](\"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/WS2812-strip-and-uC32.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Digilent's](\"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/PmodENC.png\")
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