“Turing-ring is a simple Turing Machine using just a Nano, a NeoPixel ring and a rotary encoder+push-button The ring is the tape and the UI.
Some years ago I was involved in an on-line conference. Zafar Iqbal (https://zaf.io/) presented his circular Turing Machine Model 1 and ran a competition to solve a TM problem. I won, and my prize was a NeoPixel ring. It sat in a drawer until earlier this year when I was inspired to make my own Machine.
I gave myself two challenges here, to make a nice enclosure and to create a minimalist UI.
The laser-cut enclosure uses two materials and echoes the circular LED ring and encoder knob.
The UI is just the ring and the encoder. The ring represents the tape and the encoder moves a cursor around it. Clicking the built-in push-button switches to the Editor, from which a symbol colour can be chosen, along with menu items. The menu items let you define a Machine and give access to a number of other features including:
- Load some baked-in example machines (eg binary add)
- Move machines to and from EEPROM
- Read/Write machines to serial.
- Configure speed, brightness etc
- Switch to a clock mode!”