Hello There,

My name is Serge Christopher Adam, I preferred to be called Christopher or Chris.

I am a fairly experienced Developer (Primarily Java), with over Fifteen years in E-commerce. During this time have developed applications from the ground up all the way to implementing systems using Commercial Frameworks such as ATG / Oracle Commerce and Hybris. I have worked with some fairly well know brands such as the BBC (BBC Worldwide) , Mulberry and a Multitude of Medium to Large (Multi-National) organisations. If you would like a detailed breakdown of my Work history and experience, Please visit my LinkedIn profile or download my CV.  

Video Game Design and Devlopment

I have always loved Video Games, and am a big collector of Retro Video Games. As well as playing games, I always wanted to create games. Like most people this fascination started at an early age. My first machine was an Oric-1, but really the machine that I learnt the most on was the Amiga (500).Up until that point I had only made a few small very simple games, learn’t a lot of theory or the bare bones of a Games Engine.

To help me further this interest I decided to take a course on Video Game Design and Development. This allowed me to learn the Unity Game Engine as well as Release a Game, my first tile “VEER -- Mission 0 -- “  which can be found on itch.io. I consider myself still very much a beginner in this area, with much to learn. I am also keen on Virtual Reality and look forward to developing a V.R Title at some point.

3D Printing and 3D Design

I have been 3D Printing and Designing since 2015, when I purchased my first 3D Printer, the Lulzbot TAZ 4. I have been hooked in this area ever since , learning about the properties of different filaments, designing objects in Autodesk Fusion 360, Initially simple to some fairly complex and Large objects and the general printing of objects. My setup has grown to upgrading the TAZ-4 to TAZ-5, a second 3D printer CR-10 as well as construction two enclosures to aid in temperature control while printing. I really enjoy designing and printing for both practical and fun use.

Arduino

The Arduino Platform has been a very interesting for me. I really like playing / working at this low level. I have been fascinated with Arduino’s for several years now , I also gain some more in depth knowledge about the uses of Arduino and Raspberry Pi’s  in I.o.T devices , through another course that i studied.

My most interesting project using the Arduino Platform , was to build a Hardware Sound Player. As I have mentioned I am a massive Retro Gaming fan, I love the Sega Megadrive, so I decided to see if I could created a Sound Player based off the Megadrives Sound chip , the YM2612 (Yamaha).

The player had several components:

PC: I Created a Python Script that would read .gym files , which are essentially the logged out instruction data of a game soundtrack before its has been read by the YM2612 sound chip. The Script read and parsed the file extracting command and data information. This information was then sent to the Serial Port (USB) for the Arduino to read.

Arduino / YM2612 : The arduino would listen on the serial port for data this data was extracted and interpreted. If it was a data command , the arduino would sent the information to the data pins (8 bits / 8 connections )  , if it was an instruction it would go to the setting the instruction / command pins to the correct state (high or low).

This was a difficult project since the chip is from the eighties and not much documentation exists. With what documentation I had , I was able to get the chip to play a Piano tone. Once i Achieved this ,I knew the chip was correctly wired. I could then effectively stream data to the chip from the python script , which played the game music.