Trying out my new Ambernic RG XX
Cube, at first was a bit meh, but after some MuOS and customization it is my EDC now! #gameboy #retrogaming #retrogames #gbc #pixelart #retrogame #vintagegames #handheldgame #emulator #gba #sega #nintendo #playstation #retrovives

Friends! Finally, the thrift store beat-up GBA revival is complete! Enjoy the video !
https://youtu.be/7CIzUkqGbPA?si=S5GHR7CaiwRjlphb

#gameboy #nintendo #gameboyadvance #retrogame #retrogaming #gba #handheldconsoles #handheldgame #gbc #vintagegames #diy #repair #consolemodding #soldering #fix #recycle

Hackaday Prize 2022: PewPew LCD Plays With Python

[deshipu] aka [Radomir Dopieralski] has been building educational handhelds for a good part of a decade now, and knows how to design hardware that makes for effective teaching. Today, we are graced with the PewPew LCD project, latest in the PewPew student-friendly handheld series, powered by CircuitPython.

The goal for all of these devices has been consistent -- making game programming accessible and fun. This time, as an entry in the Reuse, Recycle, Revamp round of Hackaday Prize, the new PewPew receives an upgrade - from an 8×8 LED matrix to an LCD display. This might not sound like much, but the change of display technology itself isn't the main point. [deshipu] is working on ways to bring down the price and assembly complexity of PewPew handhelds, and he's found there's plenty of old stock RH-112 displays, previously used on cellphones like Nokia 1202, which these days go for as little as $1.30 a piece.

It's exceptionally simple to get into writing games for the PewPew - one of the reasons why it's a strong platform for workshops and individual learning. There's already a slew of games and tutorials, and we can't wait to see all the cool games people can build when given all the extra pixels! And, of course, we appreciate setting an example for giving new life to old displays - displays that'd otherwise inevitably end up in a trash container behind a warehouse in China.

The Reuse, Recycle, Revamp Hackaday Prize 2022 round is going on for two more weeks. If you're making good use of something that would otherwise be discarded, please do share it with us, so that we can all learn and draw inspiration from your projects!

The HackadayPrize2022 is Sponsored by:

#handheldshacks #thehackadayprize #2022hackadayprize #circuitpython #handheldgame #nokialcd

An Up-To-Date Development Environment For The Nokia N-Gage

One of the brave but unsuccessful plays from Nokia during their glory years was the N-Gage, an attempt to merge a Symbian smartphone and a handheld game console. It may not have managed to dethrone the Game Boy Advance but it still has a band of enthusiasts, and among them is [Michael Fitzmayer] who has produced a CMake-based toolchain for the original Symbian SDK. This is intended to ease development on the devices by making them more accessible to the tools of the 2020s, and may serve to bring a new generation of applications to those old Nokias still lying forgotten in dusty drawers.

In much of the public imagination, the invention of the smartphone came with the release of the first Apple iPhone in 2007. Hackaday readers will of course trace the smartphone back much further than that to an original IBM prototype, and will remind any doubters that the Nokias which the iPhone vanquished were very successful smartphones without any of Cupertino's magic in sight. Nokia's tragedy was that they appeared not to understand what they had in Symbian, and released a bewildering array of devices intended to satisfy every possible market without recognizing that the market they needed to serve was their customers being easily able to run the apps of their choice on the things.

Symbian itself has long ago become a piece of abandonware, but during its chequered history there was a period in which an open-source version was released. It would be nice to think that projects such as this one might revive interest in this capable yet forgotten operating system, as with the passage of a decade the cost of hardware which might run it has fallen to the point of affordability. Does anyone want to relive the 2000s?

Header image: Evan-Amos, Public domain.

#phonehacks #softwaredevelopment #handheldgame #ngage #nokia #symbian

Tetris Handheld Powered By Tritium Cell, Eventually

The idea of a tritium power cell is pretty straightforward: stick enough of the tiny glowing tubes to a photovoltaic panel and your DIY "nuclear battery" will generate energy for the next decade or so. Only problem is that the power produced, measured in a few microwatts, isn't enough to do much with. But as [Ian Charnas] demonstrates in his latest video, you can eke some real-world use out of such a cell by storing up its power over a long enough period.

As with previous projects we've seen, [Ian] builds his cell by sandwiching an array of keychain-sized tritium tubes between two solar panels. Isolated from any outside light, power produced by the panels is the result of the weak green glow given off by the tube's phosphorus coating as it gets bombarded with electrons. The panels are then used to charge a bank of thin-film solid state batteries, which are notable for their exceptionally low self-discharge rate.

Some quick math told [Ian] that a week of charging should build up enough of a charge to power a knock-off handheld Tetris game for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, after waiting the prescribed amount of time, he got only a few seconds of runtime out of his hacked together power source.

His best guess is that he got a bad batch of thin-film batteries, but since he could no longer find the exact part number he used originally, he had to design a whole new PCB for the second attempt. After waiting too long months to switch the game on this time, he was able to play for nearly an hour before his homebrew nuclear energy source was depleted.

We wouldn't consider this terribly practical from a gaming standpoint, but like the solar harvesting handheld game we covered last year, it's an interesting demonstration of how even a minuscule amount of power can be put to work for intermittent applications. Here it short bout of wonky Tetris , but the concept could just as easily be applied to an off-grid sensor.

[Thanks to Dan for the tip.]

#science #solarhacks #handheldgame #solidstatebattery #tetris #tritium #tritiumbattery