LAMEBOY - another ESP12 handheld

The whole reason I'm looking for something else: I wrote seeed studio about getting the SMT version of the grove connector and they told me that they're sold out / not in stock anymore. I tried a JST 2mm 4 pin connector, but it's just a pain to connect. To be continued, but please, feel free to comment ideas. I need to find a connector that is: 

• cheap to find / buy
• is well supported with modules
• easy to connect
• shouldn't break stuff if mistaken for something else
• easily obtainable cables with no soldering involved

there's already a usb port on the LAMEBOY and I don't want people to mixup stuff

would be nice, but I don't want to short stuff by accident or have users mistake it for the headphone plug - especially if there's no audio on board. 

RJ12 / RJ25 / RJ10

that was actually already proposed to me in a twitter comment (@gsreynaga) use the same stuff that LEGO, http://wiki.makeblock.cc/index.php?title=RJ25_Wiring_System and probably others. So right now I'm leaning towards RJ10, a 4P4C cinnector, that is also used to connect phones to the speaker+mic part.

Down in the comments Molex adapters and CD rom cables (basically 2.54mm headers) were suggested, I like the hacker-ready approach, but it doesn't feel like a "finished" design that I want to achieve with revision 4. The current boards have the grove connector still on them.

@Patrick Van Oosterwijck suggested https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14417 sparkfuns QUIIC connectors, 1mm JST connectors - a wee bit too tiny and the same problems as bigger JST connectors. BUt it features a lot of sensors that one could use.

another suggestion from twitter, use spring connectors. interesting, easily plug and play ready and probably accepts pcbs, if done right. using pcbs as connectors is the cheapest thing I can think of :D https://t.co/taDxle3lOT

So I had the Ghost "game" on my lameboy, put the hudy/ninja puzzle game binary that I've exported from arduino into the spiff and was able to update my lameboy firmware from the spiff. So that's a start and could be incorporated into every game / app via a library of some sorts. Some kind of menu could help you go through the SD card, load firmware into spiff and then update the whole thing. Now I'm fiddling with switching images etc.

Got it working, I can now switch between a menu image and a game image. Woot :) With that my sketch size is limited to half a megabyte (or a bit less), since it's working like the ArduinoOTA library. It reads stuff into the 2nd half of the active 1MB flash and after restart the eBoot bootloader overwrites the firmware. Since this is supposed to be working with Arduino (not just because of me :D) so that people can easily work with it, I just need to take that as a given. There's probably a way to work with rboot, but I'd rather cross that bridge only when I come to it. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

One quirk: I had to remove SD card support, since it also defined a File. I need to take a look into that later. It probably makes sense to have a menu that allows for upgrading / updating from the SD card. I need both libraries If I want to get out of the games that also use the SD card as well. 

Recently I've started a revision 3.2 that turned into a 5.0 revision - in other words it escalated quickly. In the end I had the game boy pocket buttons integrated, changed the CH340G to a CN2102 serial converter, removed the RST and C buttons, moved the I2C port and changed the footprint, changed the footprint of the PCF8574 to a smaller one. Ah, and I ALSO RIPPED UP ALL THE WIRES :D so in the end I closed eagle and called it a waste of time, but didn't delete it. Only 124 airwires, nothing a long weekend can't fix ;)  

http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=11324
http://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/filesystem.html#flash-layout 

http://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/filesystem.html#uploading-files-to-file-system

I thought about recycling Game Boy Pocket buttons and silicone pads for the Lameboy, but didn't want to redesign the boards just yet (again). So I thought about a little gimmick: why not make a testboard for a little external controller for multiplayer stuff :D it's read out over I2C (with another PCF8574 on it). There's also a race, I've ordered the boards at oshpark and aisler to compare times. I hope every hole is matching the printed things.

so far I only know of @zakqwy ho ordered boards from that rev, but if there's anybody else out there, here's how to fix it, just connect the pads marked with an arrow with a bodge wire. 

Played around with tiles and creating characters today. monochrome 8x8 characters are hard, but I found some cool designs from pico-8. Pretty neat stuff.

I wanted to try out different techniques and tried to replicate the "experience" of the Game of the last log. I got away with a 320x320 pixel tile. The drawBitmap function of the display library seems to do something right :) so no tile engine seems to be needed, but I'm interested to see how @Radomir Dopieralski is doing it over at https://hackaday.io/project/27629-game/log/69791-inside-a-tile-engine 

I haven't seen this before, it's an orthographic "3D" version of pac man on a ZX81. This might just fit perfectly on the LCD! (anyone who wants to program that? :D)  

One Little Ghost (2012)

Game can be found here, programmed for the ZX81

http://bobs-stuff.co.uk/zx81.html 

Discussion on a sinclair board

http://www.sinclairzxworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=1044

And here's a little mockup for the nokia LCD version (converted with http://www.digole.com/tools/PicturetoC_Hex_converter.php)

any ideas are welcome, if you can think of an interesting game that might work on a monochrome display, please comment. Nokias Space Impact would be cool to have too.

So the SSD1327 grayscale display that I found on aliexpress.com is parallel only (8080 protocol). The chip itself is able to talk I2C and SPI as well, but the protocol select pins aren't broken out on the cable. Since I've ordered a display before I realized that and now that aisler has free shipping I designed a breakout anyway. Also on the board: a 15V step-up converter based on the MT3608 - that converter you get when you search for "12V step up" on eBay and sort by "price+shipping lowest first". Plus my new logo design :) I need a different micro controller for that.

fresh new (not yet working) version on the top left I call "Kürby", since it's orange with a green top - a pumpkin in German is "Kürbis" and it almost sounds like Kirby. 

Can't tell why it's not working yet, but also am tired and want to clean up the desk...

Well that clean desk motivated me to check my AP2112K layout on my Rev2 board - let's say that escalated quickly :D Found out that my enable pin was connected to the switch and the other side connected to VCC, not VREG_IN. There's no VCC to turn on VCC :D luckily it's just a bogde wire and a little cut, if anyone bought this.