Espruino-Boy? #4776
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Posted at 2015-05-21 by @gfwilliams Maybe also:
If I scrapped the JST connector (now there's a coin cell) I might be able to squeeze bluetooth in. Not sure if a coin cell would provide enough power for Bluetooth though. Posted at 2015-05-21 by @allObjects ...and when you make pins to stick it ontop of an original board as well? I know you go for the small, but that would give the board/shield multi-platorm usability... Posted at 2015-05-21 by @gfwilliams It's a good idea... I just checked though and the distance between the Espruino Board pins is slightly too narrow - they'd poke into the back of the screen. I guess it might be possible to use SMD pins, but honestly I'm not sure how many people would be willing to bother. Posted at 2015-05-21 by DrAzzy Sounds pretty damned cool. The screen is kinda lame though - the 5110 is a screen for when UX doesn't matter, and you just gotta display data on the cheap. Also, uh, with the dimensions in that image posted up above, it's awkwardly small.... Check out the displays there - they are all trivial to control - they have an MCU acting as serial (or I2C) interface, and implementing all the common graphics API commands, so it's really fast. In I2C, they say you can crank it up to 200khz baud. I've written the modules (DigoleHW and DigoleBuf) - for DigoleHW, I think I've added color support (if not, I have the code written somewhere). Of course, I could buy a crate of '5110 screens for the price of one of those juicy digole ones, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. It totally needs an EEPROM to store saved games at the very least. Depending on how deep someone went with it, I could see it almost immediately needing more EEPROMs to store level designs and stuff... But regardless of how fancy the rest of it is, everyone expects to be able to keep high scores and stuff, and wants to be able to save games. I don't think a tiny coin cell LiPo will be able to handle bluetooth. The LIR2032 ones are only 40mAh.... Posted at 2015-05-21 by @gfwilliams To a certain extent, if you cared about graphics you'd have a $3000 gaming rig and a 4k display :) But I get your point. I still think those displays are better than the OLED on the Arduboy - for instance in sunlight, but there may actually be some issues sourcing them. I don't see many people selling them now and I wonder if they are being manufactured. I wonder if there aren't some modern Nokia displays that would work better (and in color)... To be honest Bluetooth seems a bit heavy anyway. I'm thinking IR at the moment - these games shouldn't be shifting a lot of data around. Either that or maybe a cable is more simple. Posted at 2015-05-21 by @gfwilliams I think the digole stuff is slight overkill - but some of the panels they use look really interesting, and would be great if they could be added directly to the Espruino Posted at 2015-05-22 by @gfwilliams Steve Anderson also suggested adding pins for the ESP01, just in case WiFi was needed - I don't think that would be too hard to do, but it definitely wouldn't run off a coin cell then! Posted at 2015-05-22 by @gfwilliams Sent off to OSHPark now... It's got space for a Piezo speaker, and an ESP12 WiFi module. I guess we'll see what happens in 2 weeks or so, when it comes back from OSHPark. Attachments: Posted at 2015-06-09 by @gfwilliams Just got the PCB back... it needs a few tweaks, but here's the result... Seems quite fun - you just snap a Nokia 5110 PCB right onto the front, and you need to put on the surface mount switches and one SMD capacitor - all stuff that's quite easy. Sadly I don't have the watch battery holder I need, so I can't show you it running on a battery! Attachments: Posted at 2015-06-09 by Jorgen yeah cool! I try to adjust the PCB to have one of these "joystick" buttons instead of the 4 buttons and one of these OLED displays instad of the 5110.
@gfwilliams how easy or dificcult is it to change the PCB layout to have these OLED display and joystick buttons instead of your layout? Posted at 2015-06-09 by @gfwilliams Well, I guess you've seen the back of the OLED you have? It's soldered right to the PCB, and there are a bunch of extra components... I'm not sure how easy that'd be to put together yourself. If you just wanted to use the modules you suggested as they are, it'd be really easy to come up with a board that just joined the modules together - but it's a totally different board design to what's above. Also - the joystick looks pretty big, and the OLED is tiny - it might look a bit misshapen? Posted at 2015-06-09 by Jorgen Oh damn, you're so right. The joystick is huge in compare to the display oO Posted at 2015-06-09 by @gfwilliams Yes - I wonder if you could find a small board with buttons on it from somewhere? If so then you could just solder everything straight onto the Pico. Posted at 2015-06-10 by Jorgen @gfwilliams this would be a good solution to replace the 4 pushbuttons: Posted at 2015-06-10 by @gfwilliams I'm not sure it really needs a joystick? I find the 4 pushbuttons just fine - and after all, the Gameboy didn't have a joystick either. Something like that joystick is probably quite hard to source, but you can buy the buttons from anywhere, and for a few pence each. I guess it might be possible to add connections for both, but having through-hole is a total pain as it'd make it hard to fit the coin cell onto the reverse of the board. The other option is just to put a hole in the PCB between the 4 buttons, and then it'd be relatively easy to 3d print a lever-like thing that could turn the 4 buttons into a joystick. Posted at 2015-06-10 by DrAzzy
Which is what the original gameboy did - it didn't have a joy stick, but the directional pad was rigid, like such a lever-like thing. Posted at 2015-06-10 by Jorgen The idea with the joystick is just to have better control - these micro buttons are so small, I have no chance to press them the right way :D Posted at 2015-06-11 by Rek you should make this a kit, I would totally buy and build one Posted at 2015-06-11 by @gfwilliams Thanks! Yes, that's the plan! I think the board needs a few more tweaks before I get a bunch produced though. I also need to find out where to buy those displays - they're pretty unique in being a graphics display that you can just clip on - rather than requiring any fine-pitch soldering, but very few people seem to be selling the bare display any more. @jorgen those switches aren't the crazy tiny ones, they're something like 6mm x 6mm - they're actually pretty easy to use. Posted at 2015-06-11 by Jorgen @gfwilliams ok - thought they are these micro mini mini mini buttons :D Posted at 2015-06-11 by @gfwilliams There are these guys: http://www.espruino.com/SSD1351 There's a 1.5" of that type from Adafruit: http://www.adafruit.com/product/1431 Problem is, it gets hard to get the data out to them quickly. 16 bit * 128 * 128 is quite a lot of bytes to shift for each frame of data - it's also quite a lot of data just to store on the MCU :) I have come up with a way of doing paletted colour on those displays, but haven't implemented it for that OLED driver (although it'd be easy to just copy the relevant code in if you wanted to). If you're after nice black and white displays you could also look at the Sharp Memory LCDs. They are absolutely beautiful and amazingly low power, but unfortunately they're not exactly cheap either: http://www.espruino.com/MemoryLCD Posted at 2015-06-11 by Jorgen
Wow they are really sharp and nice. Posted at 2015-06-11 by @gfwilliams Afraid I haven't seen any - not mono graphic ones anyway. If you find any let me know though! Posted at 2015-06-12 by alexanderbrevig Really cool stuff :) This would be a perfect first project for my 11yo kid brother! Posted at 2015-06-12 by DrAzzy Larger monochrome OLEDs exist. I got my pulse measured at the hospital with a pulse oximeter with a 128x64 (I think) OLED display, with the split yellow and blue.... AND IT WAS ABOUT 2 INCH DIAGONAL! I'm sure it was using an SSD1306... Sadly, he never let it out of his sight :-/ 1.3's are common, but above that, I can't find any monochrome ones. There are some interesting displays here: http://digole.com/ (control for the digole displays is all the same, and easy. Posted at 2015-06-15 by @gfwilliams The Digole ones seem good, but as Espruino already has the graphics capability (and I'd be making a new PCB) it seems a shame to pay extra for another MCU and PCB that aren't really needed. Maybe I'm being a luddite, but I actually quite like monochrome LCDs. I'd happily trade a bit of contrast and response time for being able to use the device outside in sunlight. This panel looks good, if it could be found on its own: http://digole.com/index.php?productID=907 The problem is connecting to a PCB though. The Nokia ones seem pretty unique in that they've got an elastomer (I think?) strip that means you can just push them onto a PCB. Pretty much all the rest seem to need some kind of fine pitch soldering. (Sharp Memory LCDs can be connected by Elastomer, but then they're also insanely expensive) I guess the other option is just to produce a much smaller PCB with 0.1" pins at the top. It'd then be possible to solder on a variety of different LCD/OLED types. That doesn't seem quite as appealing to me though - it also complicates the software... It'd be nice if games only had to be written for a certain screen size. Posted at 2015-06-15 by DrAzzy There is a readily available 128x64 monochrome LCDs available from ebay, the "12864" one. All over eBay, and a couple inches across. They come with the ribbon cable connector (hence, fine pitch soldering to solder down the connector), or in modules with it broken out to 0.1" pin header. IIRC controlling them looked really nasty though. |
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Posted at 2015-05-21 by @gfwilliams
Anyone seen this? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903888394/arduboy-card-sized-gaming
I'd thought about doing a tiny Espruino GameBoy yesterday, and today Mark sent me an e-mail asking how hard it might be. I just knocked up something really simple... it has:
I guess it could do with some kind of piezo speaker too.
Any thoughts? Eagle files are here: https://github.com/espruino/EspruinoBoard/tree/master/Pico/EspruBoy
If everyone thinks its ok I'll send it off and get a few made. No promises it'll actually work :)
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