I have been largely focused on finishing up my PhD as of late, so I haven't been doing releases of BeagleSNES. But, BeagleSNES is part of the larger Beagle Entertainment System (BES) project that I've been working on for a while. Progress on that is plodding along, and I'm hoping to pull all of its pieces together to do a full release of BES v0.1 within the next few months. This includes:

• A web interface (jQuery and node.js) for uploading and configuring ROMs. Just plug the BBB into your PC via a USB cable, go to 192.168.whatever, and boom... there it is. The current version of this is at Github here: https://github.com/hendersa/bes-config-node
• A cape board for native SNES gamepad interfacing. The next rev of prototype PCB prints are back from China, and I have some PRU assembly code to debug to drive the cape. The current version of this (Eagle PCB files) is available at Github here: https://github.com/hendersa/bescape
• Cleaning up my whole BES codebase. I chopped out a few hundred lines of code, added a new dialog, replaced all of my char buffers with std::string, ditched my linked lists for the std::vector template, const'd everything I could, merged code duplicated across BES and the BeagleSNES codebases, and basically made code that isn't embarrassing. The current version of this is at Github here: https://github.com/hendersa/bes

Since I was going to do some eval on the new PCBs that came in, I figured that I'd set up a camera and record it. I got out my GoPro Hero, set it up on my tripod, and got to work:

Here is a 7x speed video of my assembly and test of the SNES gamepad line-level converter circuit that interfaces the 5V SNES gamepads to the 3.3v GPIOs on the BeagleBone Black:

Luckily, I stick to SMT components that use a package size of 0805 or larger so that I can assemble my designs by hand with only a soldering iron and tweezers.