The worst factor a child might obtain within the ‘90s was the dreaded “digital recreation.” They had been ultracheap handheld units that might solely play a single recreation and normally didn’t even do this effectively. However they had been designed in such a manner that well-meaning grandparents would assume they had been simply pretty much as good as a Nintendo Sport Boy, like the shop model model of Fruit Loops. Apparently that deception by no means fairly disappeared and a few determined producers are nonetheless producing related merchandise. Fortunately, X3e was in a position to flip their digital recreation into an Arduboy that’s really enjoyable.
X3e bought this recreation from Wibra, which is a series of low cost shops within the Netherlands. Like related shops all over the world, Wibra has numerous objects of questionable high quality and that features this “Mini Brickgame.” It seems to be a tool that has remained unchanged for the final 20 years and has merely been rebranded by numerous firms. However although its digital parts had been undesirable and almost ineffective, X3e felt fondness for the gadget’s throwback design. So, they dropped €2.50 to rescue the sport from the low cost bin and obtained to hacking.
This can be a actually small gadget with out a lot room to work with contained in the enclosure, so X3e wanted some small parts. The 2 most essential of these are an Arduino Professional Mini board and a SSD1306-driven OLED display. That Arduino mannequin is now discontinued, but it surely has a Microchip ATmega328P microcontroller that’s suitable with another model of Arduboy. The show is roughly the identical width, however the top is way smaller. That leaves a niche on the backside of the enclosure’s window, but it surely doesn’t look unhealthy. Energy comes from the unique LR44 batteries and X3e added an exterior pin header for debugging with out opening the case.
The large problem was connecting the membrane buttons from the unique PCB to the Arduino. The designers of the unique gadget routed the traces in an uncommon manner, with some buttons related on to pins and others multiplexed. However X3e was ultimately in a position to get the Arduino reliably studying button presses.
Now the “Wibraboy” can play all the unbelievable community-developed video games which might be obtainable for the Arduboy.