Game Card

1.  I've improved the speed and size of the Display library by switching to TinyWireM instead of SoftwareWire. It's just a much smaller library. Instead of 40% of your code being the display library, it's now only like 25% or something.
2. I removed the need to use the Arduino IDE for development. Instead, I added a Makefile which sets up an arduino-cli environment and allows me to do everything from compiling to burning bootloaders and uploading from VS code and a terminal, meaning I also don't need to copy the libraries over into my Arduino libraries folder to update them. Everything is self-contained in the repo which makes further development faster and easier.

It's been a fun 9 months, but this project is complete.

The final boards have been received and they function admirably.

I'll make a video on YouTube soon showcasing the two games I've made and the development process.

I hope y'all enjoy my project!

I've gotten in what I believe to be the last revision of the boards before the final.

Cartridges are completely done, so now I'm waiting on the final version of the Cards which will have the built-in power supply storage system.

Along with that, I've completed both a Pong clone and a Snake clone for the system and tested them on my prototype. You can see the code for the games as well as some documentation on programming the cartridges at the Github site.

When I get the final board revisions in, the project will be complete!

I found out that apparently this entire thing can run at 3V off of a CR2302 coin cell for several hours, so I've decided to use that as the primary power source.

Board revisions are on the way!

Today I developed the version 3 PCB which uses the new Shell + MCU on Cartridge design.

Here's the pic for those:

I've selected the MCU used as well - ATtiny84A. It's the cheapest MCU I'll be able to utilize for this project. It's also surface mount, something I'll have to learn to do lol.

I've ordered them, so now I have to wait till I get all the parts.

I realized that I was making lots of compromises and that this board was very expensive to make due to the pi.

I also realized that unlike most consoles and handhelds, I could get away with putting the microcontroller into the ROM and having it preflashed because that would mean the game is only like $1.

I plan to use ATtiny84 "ROM"s which slot into the main shell (still an OLED).

This will bring down the overall cost and complexity of the system while also boosting the performance by not using an interpreter.

Essentially, I expect the overall system to be $5 (if I get the OLEDs from overseas) and the cartridges to be $1 each.