(^92) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
ay back in 1983, a Japanese
company called Tomy
created one of the most
remarkable toys of its generation:
Tomy Turnin’ Turbo Dashboard
was a driving simulator complete
with gears, ignition, a working
dashboard, a steering wheel, and
even a looping display.
Three years later, Sega released
arguably (well, we’d argue it) the
Projects SHOWCASE
Combining two classics into one amazing racing project, Matt Brailsford
used a Raspberry Pi to build this incredible 1980s mash-up of racing toys
The fuel gauge
represents
the stage time
remaining
The turbo light
comes on in
high gear
A small
vibrating motor
was added
for haptic
feedback
Matt tried
four different
screens before
finding one
that fit
Matt hacked
the speed to
change it to
mph from kph
Quick
Facts
All of the controls and dashboard
components are wired up to the
Out Run game via a Raspberry Pi
TOMY TURNIN’ TURBO
DASHBOARD OUT RUN
The screen displays an Out
Run clone called Cannonball
W
This classic Tomy Turnin’
Dashboard is hacked into
a Sega arcade machine
MATT BRAILSFORD
A web developer by day and hardware
hacker by night, Matt (aka Circuitbeard)
is a Barnsley-based maker who loves to
hack old eighties tech.
circuitbeard.co.uk
greatest, coolest racing game
of all time: Out Run.
One maker, Matt Brailsford,
picked up a Tomy Turnin’ Turbo
Dashboard on eBay and had a spark
of genius: why not turn it into a fully
working Out Run arcade machine?
Matt removed the original
display from the Tomy Turnin’
Turbo Dashboard and replaced
it with a modern screen. “I tried
quite a few [screens] trying to get
one that would fit,” says Matt. His
first attempt was a screen that
worked from the GPIO, but this left
few pins for all the other mods.
“And the extra processing slowed
the game down.”
In the end, Matt used a KeDei
3.5-inch HDMI display (kedei.net).
92 raspberrypi.org/magpi