I've always wanted something like this board, buttons which can light up (preferably a few colours), to use to make games. Anyone ever found such a board which is hackable / programmable?
Did that a few years back, i guess this might still be possible
Looks like they are still around? https://novationmusic.com/launchpad
Also seems to be in stock locally.
The device that I think popularized that design (citation needed) was the Monome (https://monome.org/) that looks like it is also still around and it has (always had?) some kind of open source license (https://github.com/monome).
Yes Monome was this initial inspiration then followed by many, but it was way more expensive and niche IIRC
I had a fork of this at one point where I made GoL for it and had mapped the lit cells to a MIDI output.
https://github.com/mat1jaczyyy/lpp-performance-cfw
I haven't tried this yet, but there's also an open source grid-controller project.
I haven't tried reverse-engineering one yet, I hope at least some of these are hackable? Conway's life would certainly be one fun use, but custom games are totally something I'd want to make too!
Are these actually membrane or are there some switches there? I assume membrane, if only based on the dirt-cheap price. Anyway in combination with lighting up + sound the feedback feels immersive enough, it's definitely more fun than poking a tablet.