Nintendo Super Scope Modded For Modern Televisions -- Episode 469

This was a super cool project! Very well done! Now I'm wondering: would there be a way to do this with the Nintendo ROB robot?

The folks on AtariAge.com and Adafruit.com figured out what bits to send/the timing to send them, and got it working using direct button inputs (https://learn.adafruit.com/controlling-a-classic-nintendo-r-o-b-robot-using-circuit-playground-express ), but I'm wondering if a peripheral for the NES could be made to separate out the light flashes from the video out signal and send them to ROB using an LED (IR or otherwise), that way modifying the original hardware wouldn't be necessary? Maybe with that Video Sync Separator chip or one similar?

Thanks! I don't know enough about R.O.B. to give you an answer, but have you seen this episode: https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-90849/l/episode-361-rob-rebuild-and-upgrade ?

I did! It was interesting the different modifications he made to add functionality to ROB, but it's not quite what I've been looking for.

There's got to be a way out there to get ROB working with modern TVs without modifying his original hardware. That Adafruit link mentions that ROB can be controlled by flashing an LED in the correct pattern. ROB has a phototransistor in his left eye connected to an undocumented Sharp IR3T07 decoder chip. The people at AtariAge.com reverse engineered old game cartridges to figure out ROBs control codes, and each command consists of 13 bits. The first 5 bits are an initialization string and are always the same: 00010. The next 8 bits are the command, and vary based on what you want ROB to do. Send the right light pulses in the right timing and order, and he works just like normal.

While Adafruit's documentation is enough to get an LED-based input device working for ROB, I don't know anything about converting part of a video signal into a timed LED flash. Maybe you or someone savvy in things like this could figure out how!

I did! It was interesting the different modifications he made to add functionality to ROB, but it's not quite what I've been looking for.

There's got to be a way out there to get ROB working with modern TVs without modifying his original hardware. That Adafruit link mentions that ROB can be controlled by flashing an LED in the correct pattern. ROB has a phototransistor in his left eye connected to an undocumented Sharp IR3T07 decoder chip. The people at AtariAge.com reverse engineered old game cartridges to figure out ROBs control codes, and each command consists of 13 bits. The first 5 bits are an initialization string and are always the same: 00010. The next 8 bits are the command, and vary based on what you want ROB to do. Send the right light pulses in the right timing and order, and he works just like normal.

While Adafruit's documentation is enough to get an LED-based input device working for ROB, I don't know anything about converting part of a video signal into a timed LED flash. Maybe you or someone savvy in things like this could figure out how!