Espruino-Boy?

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:

• one of the Nokia 5110 LCDs mounted straight on
  
• surface mount Pico on the back
  
• 6 surface mount buttons
  
• a JST battery connector / coin cell holder / supercap on the back
  
  

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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Maybe also:

• EEPROM/SPI for saved games
  
• Multi-player
  
  • Bluetooth outline?
    
  • maybe just a way to connect a wire - headphone jack?
    
  • Infra-red RX and TX - then it could be used as a remote control as well
    
• Outline for a LiPo charger IC - you can get LiPo coin cells
  
  

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.

...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...

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.

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....

http://digole.com/

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....

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.

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

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!

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.

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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!

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yeah cool!
I want to built one too.
Looks really awesome.

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.

resolution changes from 84x48 to 128x64

@Gordon how easy or dificcult is it to change the PCB layout to have these OLED display and joystick buttons instead of your layout?

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?

Oh damn, you're so right. The joystick is huge in compare to the display oO
Perhaps I use the 4 buttons too...
I can just solder the display module by header pins onto the pcb.

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.

@Gordon this would be a good solution to replace the 4 pushbuttons:

4-direction-Joystick by seedstudio

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.

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.

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.

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
But I order some and try out - perhaps it worked - or not - we will see

you should make this a kit, I would totally buy and build one

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.

@Gordon ok - thought they are these micro mini mini mini buttons :D
Really looking forward to this kit!
Hope you find a good seller for the displays.
btw. do you know any OLED displays bigger than 1.3" ?

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

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: espruino.com/MemoryLCD

Wow they are really sharp and nice.
I'm looking exactly for that kind of displays - don't need any colors.
The best would be OLED display of more than 2" like the small 0.96" once I used in my examples - but much bigger ;)

Afraid I haven't seen any - not mono graphic ones anyway. If you find any let me know though!

Really cool stuff :) This would be a perfect first project for my 11yo kid brother!