I have been following the products of demoscene parties for years, especially in Hungary. Not every year, but in every third or fourth years I am attending to one of Hungarian party. Four weeks before the start of Function 2022 demoscene party I've decided that I am going to submit some compos to demoscene party that celebrates his twentieth birthday this year. Two are more like compofillers and one is a more serious product. What I have wanted to do for a long time is to take an old machine from the past, adding to it some today's improvement and a little more spectacular demoscene spice. Years ago I've bought an good old Mikromat on one of Hungarian bidding website. It's a Hungarian-made logical cybernetics game from 1966 (about Mikromat you can find lots of information on the bottom links). So I have picked up my Mikromat enhanced it by Arduino and spiced it up with kind of spectacular "demoscene spice". So way was born the Dancing Mikromat.

The Dancing Mikromat is actually an original Mikromat that is programmed with an Arduino Duemilanove. An end of original wires (thicker) that belong to Mikromat are connected from below side of Mikromat. The other end of original wire is connected to an new, modern wire (thinner). I was lucky because on the original wire there is a little hole at the end of metal part. The needle of modern wire fits exactly in this hole. ツ. The other needle of new wire was connected to the breadboard. The 5V pin of Arduino Duemilanove feeds the lights and relays on Mikromat because they are not LEDs but mini bulbs so they need more voltage as the normal pins have. The digital pins are outputs that are connected one by one to PNP transistors. When a PNP transistor gets sign from the digital PIN it feeds on his other leg through the hybrid (original-new-connected) wire one of bulb or relay. So way there is twelve output (four red bulbs, four relays, four blue bulbs) on Mikromat. The bulbs lights up that's clear, the relay as it hits gives nice relay-sound. The red buttons are currently not in usage. With this method there is twelve pure outputs that can be controlled one by one with digital pins.
The source code can be download at bottom. It has actually two section. The first one a hard-coded demo made by own taste. When the Arduino starts it plays always this demo section first. The second part is kind of simple AI. So the Mikromat randomly generates the dance of light and relays. The Arduino Duemilanove can be controlled from a power bank through USB cable (operating voltage 7-12V). So every part (Arduino, USB cable, breadboard, all wires and power bank) can be hidden under the Mikromat.
When the Mikromat has started to dance then I've created a video about it for the demoscene show. It was released in Wild Demo/Animation category. The compo received nice applause from the participiants during the compoevening and finally it was ranked to 5th place.