By  David Murphy   

The open-source Arduino electronics platform has received a ton of attention from the hardware enthusiast community. And one more follower is joining the fray--Mario himself. The mustachioed plumber of console video game fame has been converted into an eight-by-eight LED matrix by Carnegie Mellon University student Chloe Fan. And, yes, she's even made a separate Arduino device to give her side-scrolling adventure the classic Mario theme.

The game isn't quite the Mario you know from your legacy Nintendo Entertainment System (or current-generation Wii). For starters, it's just lights: While one often sees the game's LED-backed grid used in devices like the open-source Monome, where it can function as a push-button toggle for music beats and effects, Fan's version of Mario uses the grid as a display only. Mario--or rather, a one-light representation of the game's hero--is controlled NES-style through the use of two buttons. One button makes Mario move forward; the other makes him leap into the air.

Obviously, certain elements are missing from this stripped-down version of the famous platform-scroller. Unlike Nintendo's version, there aren't any objects to interact with, nor can you really do anything save for make a little light move from platform to platform. If you scroll forward too quickly and accidentally bump Mario off the screen, the level automatically restarts--a harsh punishment for those who don't quite master the separate jumping and forwarding routines.

So why does this matter? For starters, it's a unique combination of open-source hardware and software development that's recreated a classic element from video game culture on relatively simple, inexpensive equipment. Ardiuno is a free, open-source electronics platform that comes with a full set of schematics for assembly (and subsequent tweaking) of a hardware microcontroller. Lazier developers can purchase pre-configured Ardiuno boards from a variety of sources, and the specific C/C++ coding environment--Ardiuno's language--is configurable via open-source software across a variety of operating systems.

Launched in 2005, Ardiuno has served as the backbone for a number of other unique projects across the Web. Its ability to register inputs from multiple sensors and communicate with different pieces of software running on a conventional desktop system allows the microcontroller to wear many different hats.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361357,00.asp