Snake on a salvaged seven-segment display

José Luis Monteiro and his father got the classic Snake running on a seven-segment LED display pulled from an old DVD player. The first few seconds are great. After that, the food blends into the snake.

Build sheet

Device page: DVD player →

Can I build this?Intermediate · AI 4/5 · $5–20

Difficulty: Intermediate
AI-buildability: 4/5
Time: A weekend
Cost: $5–20

Parts

SM1628 display driver Seven-segment LED display (salvaged from DVD player)

Tools

soldering ironmultimeterjumper wires

Starter prompt

Based on "Snake on a salvaged seven-segment display" on Afterware: https://afterware.xyz/p/snake-on-a-salvaged-seven-segment-display

Write Arduino firmware for a microcontroller driving a salvaged seven-segment LED display through an SM1628 driver chip. Map the segments to a grid, implement classic Snake with a snake that grows on each food pickup, and use two buttons for left and right turns. Start by writing a test sketch that lights each segment in turn so I can confirm the wiring.

Estimates based on the original write-up. How AI-buildability is scored. Building with an AI assistant? Connect it to Afterware (free MCP server).

Story

Each segment on the display stands in for a piece of the growing snake, and the segments already sit in a rough rectangular grid, so steering around is easy. The catch is resolution. The food is made of the same segments as the snake, so it gets confusing fast. Monteiro and his father built it anyway, and the first few moments are surprisingly playable.

The display came out of an old DVD player. The project's documentation, source code and a video show how to drive these LED displays from a microcontroller, using the SM1628 driver chip in the project name. The write-up calls it a solid primer on reverse engineering this kind of display.

If you have a dead appliance with a segment display, this is a cheap way to find out what it can do. You need a microcontroller, a datasheet and some patience. The result will be ugly and frustrating, which is the whole point.

Resources · 1

Source code and documentation

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