When Arduino introduced the maker world to microcontroller development boards, they gave us just the necessities. Early Arduino models were little more than breakout boards for microcontrollers with built-in voltage regulators and USB-to-serial chips for programming. But we’re seeing more and more development boards with a lot of extra hardware, which is helpful for prototyping and even for using the development board as a complete device. The Adafruit CLUE development board includes many of those goodies and it can even run Doom.
When Arduino introduced the maker world to microcontroller development boards, they gave us just the necessities. Early Arduino models were little more than breakout boards for microcontrollers with built-in voltage regulators and USB-to-serial chips for programming. But we’re seeing more and more development boards with a lot of extra hardware, which is helpful for prototyping and even for using the development board as a complete device. The Adafruit CLUE development board includes many of those goodies and it can even run Doom.
Aside from being the game that started the first-person shooter craze, Doom also holds a special place in the hardware hacking community. “But can it run Doom?” is the kind of question that is almost always applicable. When it comes to the Adafruit CLUE development board, the answer is a resounding “yes!” Not only can it run Doom, it can run it very well. Next-hack found that Doom runs smoothly on nRF52840-based devices, including the Adafruit CLUE, at 30 FPS (frames per second). That makes it very playable on the CLUE’s 240 x 240 pixel 1.4″ full-color IPS TFT display.
The Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 is an SoC with built-in Bluetooth connectivity, 1MB of flash, 256KB of RAM, and a 64MHz Arm Cortex-M4 processor. The Adafruit CLUE includes the nRF52840, the TFT display, a whole range of sensors, a NeoPixel LED, an additional 2MB of flash storage, a buzzer, two white LEDs, and a BBC micro:bit-style edge connector. To play Doom, Next-hack built an add-on board that pipes out audio through a headphone jack and provides eight gameplay buttons.
