It has long been a joke in an inner person and the challenge that the Doom game, at least the original with ID software from 1993, can run on anything eligible as a computer. Of course, the latter can be defined as anything that has a microprocessor, which includes most non-trivial consumer electronics today. Smart equipment is even a better target for these efforts, and it is really what some hackers tried in making intelligent lighting IKEA TrackFri running the game, although with a little cheating needed.
Even though it looks raw with today’s standards, the original Doom game doesn’t mean simple. It is one of the first games it’s time to use 3D graphics technology and don’t need a small amount of work to make it suitable on a computer that is very constrained by that age. The computer that is very constrained almost resembles a single microcontroller and computer board today, making it the perfect challenge to improve the game into one of the modern computers but which are equally limited.
This group on the next hacking took the challenge and tried to apply it to an off-shelf device that was not intended to run any havoc or game in the beginning. They settled on the smart lamp Ikea Tradfri, especially the newer GU10 345 RGB LED model, which happened to run on the 80MHz Cortex M33 processor. That’s enough CPU for havoc, but that’s where everything starts to be more difficult.
Smart lights only have around 108kb RAM, much smaller than 384KB of Port of Doom GBA. Of course, that’s the type of hacking challenge that the group developed. Even with it resolved, the port also needs to really attach the display, make audio and input function, and all other parts that will make havoc can really be played.
In the end, they got Doom to walk at Ikea Tradfri. Technically, it actually runs on the tradfri (MCU) microcontroller unit with an attached screen because the smart lights don’t have themselves. Maybe in the near future, IKEA will launch a smart lamp that does have several screen forms, and then it might be more trivial for Port Doom to the device. What purpose? For science, of course!
