Minecraft Compass with TIC

A little project to drive a “real-world” compass from Minecraft via USB using a TIC.

Simple, but quite fun to do. Thanks for your help so I could just drive it off the USB.

Also, I made a Java interface for the TIC here: GitHub - theredwagoneer/javaTic: Java USB interface for the Pololu TIC stepper motor controller

Video: Real World Minecraft Compass - YouTube

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Hello.

Thank you for sharing your project; that is really neat, and I’m sure your neighbor really got a kick out of it!

It reminds of the Liquid Lifebar we made a blog post about all the way back in 2013. Since then, I’ve always thought there was something satisfying about having a physical representation of something from a video game, but I haven’t seen a lot of other projects like it. I might have to try to make a compass for myself!

By the way, in case you weren’t aware we also offer custom laser cutting.

Brandon

The link to that Liquid Lifebar blog post is embedded in my previous post, but here it is again for convenience:

https://www.pololu.com/blog/76/liquid-lifebar

Brandon

Thanks for this blog post link

Are there any plans to add Serial support for this library? I am currently working on a project using one of the Tic boards, and want to write a Java desktop app to connect over Serial. However, looking at the sample code in the documentation there is no Java/Serial example, so having this library support serial connections would be great.

Thanks

No plans. If I was connecting a desktop via serial, I would have just used a USB/serial converter anyway, so I just skipped the extra HW and went straight to USB. If you’d like to add serial to it, feel free though! Good Luck.

Thanks for the quick reply. I agree with you 100%, unfortunately the device needs to also work with a touch screen controller via serial as well, so I want to just use the serial interface for both.

Best,