Conway's Game of Life, in real life

Posted by surprisetalk 7 hours ago

Conway's Game of Life, in real life(lcamtuf.substack.com)

96 points | 27 commentspage 2

CJefferson 4 hours ago|

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?

rmnclmnt 3 hours ago||

Novation Launchpad used to be exactly that: you send MIDI CC messages with proper values and you can light up the grid (with different colors).

Did that a few years back, i guess this might still be possible

1313ed01 3 hours ago||

> used to be

Looks like they are still around? https://novationmusic.com/launchpad

Also seems to be in stock locally.

The device that I think popularized that design (citation needed) was the Monome (https://monome.org/) that looks like it is also still around and it has (always had?) some kind of open source license (https://github.com/monome).

Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago||

https://www.adafruit.com/category/280, they're ready made from 4x4 to 16x8 but in theory you can just put more modules into an enclosure.

self_awareness 3 hours ago||

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

Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago||

Does make me wonder if it's possible to make a physical / analog / mechanical version of Game of Life.

fake edit: yes, kind of: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/forums/topic/164622-moc-mec...

zabzonk 1 hour ago||

sure is - i made one using poker chips and a chessboard - i had to do the computations using my own brain though :-(

https://latedev.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/a-poker-chip-comput...

gspr 2 hours ago||

I think "physical" refers to the fact that you initialize the state by pressing physical buttons. That's quite accurate.

mkirsten 2 hours ago||

It is beautiful

fwipsy 4 hours ago||

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

nsnzjznzbx 1 hour ago|

You need a science museum!

shawoodle65 2 hours ago||

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gethwhunter34 2 hours ago|

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