Space Invaders Button


Marcus at Interactive Matter made this awesome space invaders button, inspired by Alex Weber’s 64pixels project.  It uses almost entirely SMT components and an ATmega164P microcontroller.

The PCB layout is gorgeous!

Marcus provides schematics, source code, and some helpful notes about surface mount soldering. I really like to see SMT projects like these popping up, proving that with the right tools, through hole packaging is no longer a necessity for DIY!

Space Invaders Button | Interactive Matter.

3 thoughts on “Space Invaders Button”

  1. Its nice that you like it. Thanks! I put a lot of effort into PCB design. I like cleanly structured boards 😉
    SMT is much easier than through the hole – if you are used to it (and I started just a half a year ago). You quickly need an hot air station – but you can get them for about 100€-150€ on ebay.
    The resistors are 0402 resistor arrays, you can get them at Digikey and probably Mouser. They are really handy for anything from pull up/down resistors or current limiting resistors. I think they are not very easy to solder with an iron. And they are cheap (about 1.3€ for 100).

    1. Yeah, really cool. The transistors include the current limiting base resistors internally, which I hadn’t seen before. Those resistor packs are cool, too. They look like several surface mount resistors side by side, epoxied together.

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