Most weekend builds end with a blinking LED and a tidy breadboard. Michael Newton, an avionics engineer in Calgary, aimed higher: a 1:1 replica of the Apollo DSKY, the keypad-and-display unit astronauts used to talk to their guidance computer. Raspberry Pi’s write-up covers the whole story, and it is a good template for a long-weekend challenge.
What he built
The Recreate Apollo project pairs a Raspberry Pi with a printed DSKY shell and runs the Virtual AGC emulator, loaded with the Apollo 13 Command Module software. The original Apollo Guidance Computer came out of MIT’s Draper Laboratory in 1966, ran at 1.024 MHz, and carried under 100 kB of memory. Michael’s replica is about 90% faithful on the outside, with the keypad and display wired to microcontrollers that talk to the Pi over USB.
Parts and reality check
The emulator, yaAGC, keeps the 15-bit word plus one parity bit and the original timing, including the interrupt behaviour behind the famous 1201/1202 alarms. The Pi barely warms up doing it. For keys he picked Kailh Box Navy switches for their loud click, though he admits they are far from the real keypad. The screen needed a custom clip holder because its PCB was larger than the original mount allowed. Every CAD file, the schematics, and a 100-page build guide sit free on GitHub, so the real cost is your time: a few weeks of printing, painting, and wiring for the full replica.
Spend your Sunday on this
You do not need the whole case to learn from it. Flash Raspberry Pi OS, install Virtual AGC, and run the emulator on screen first. Then wire one key and one LED through a GPIO pin to see how the keypad scan works. Read the emulator background on Wikipedia, then check mkme.org for the DSKY build that inspired Michael.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the Raspberry Pi run Apollo software?
It runs yaAGC from the Virtual AGC project, which emulates the Apollo Guidance Computer’s 15-bit word, parity bit, interrupt timing, and 1.024 MHz clock, loaded with Apollo 13 Command Module code.
What skills and parts does this build need?
You need a Raspberry Pi, microcontrollers for the keys and display, mechanical switches, a small screen, and a printed or fabricated case. The free GitHub guide runs about 100 pages and assumes no prior experience.
What will I learn if I build this?
You will learn emulator setup on Raspberry Pi OS, USB communication between a Pi and microcontrollers, keypad scanning, display mounting, and how to read historical engineering drawings into CAD files.
