Slashdot Mirror
A Credit Card-Sized, Arduino-Based Game Device (Video)
Slashdot's Tim Lord was cruising the halls at OSCON, where he spotted Kevin Bates and his tiny Arduino-based device, called the Arduboy. On Kevin's Tindie.com sales page, he says the games it can run include, "Space Rocks, Snake, Flappy Ball, Chess, Breakout, and many more...The most exciting one could be made by you!" || His work with Arduboy got Kevin invited to the recent White House Maker Faire, where he rubbed shoulders (and shot selfies with) Bill Nye the Science Guy, Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas, and Arduino creator Massimo Banzi. || Does Kevin have a Kickstarter in the works? There's nothing about Arduboy on Kickstarter.com, and given the Arduboy's simplicity and low price (currently $50), plus stories about it everywhere from Time.com to engadget to Slashdot, he may not need any financing or capital to make his idea succeed. (Alternate Video Link)
Hmmm...a small-factor gaming device. My kids call that "one of dad's old phones." They no longer have cell service, but they pretty much all run Android or iOS and can still play a lot of games, including games that need the Internet. Plus, you can buy an entry-level Android phone new (from a pay-as-you-go service) for around $50. So...what's the market for this thing?
... the games it can run include, ... The most exciting one could be made by you!"
Except in Soviet Russia ...
[ Ya, I hate myself for this, but it's been a really slow day. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...please, PLEASE edit this video down to 1-2 minutes.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
What's really such a big deal about this?
I mean, sure -- it's cool that he shrunk a hand-held game system concept down into something this tiny. But practically speaking, I can't see much marketability for something that just allows replaying the same old, relatively simplistic arcade games of the 80's (and "standards" like chess)?
Strikes me as more of a novelty, especially for Arduino fans. But again, just how many pieces of electronics do we need to run this stuff? Sure, you can suggest that other programmers take on the challenge of making the "coolest game able to run" on it -- but WHY should they bother? They'd have better luck even if they were targeting old PalmPilot devices rescued from some electronics recycling dump.
The core of this thing is a microcontroller designed to run a fixed set of software in an embedded system. This is a very odd choice for a gaming platform, not least because its Harvard architecture prevents executing code from anywhere except its internal code flash, meaning that you either need to flash it each time you want to play a new game, or write all of the games in an bytecode in RAM and make the flash include an interpreter.
Something that supports external memory (so you can map in a ROM a la old cartridge-based systems) or executing code from its internal RAM (so you can load something from e.g. an SD card) would be a better choice, I feel.
This thing just seems like bad engineering... wrong tool for the job, when plenty of better tools are available for comparable cost. Although it's still a microcontroller, at least some of the ARM Cortex-M subtypes support executing code from RAM and come in a similar chip package.
The Arduboy was news in March.
http://hackaday.com/2014/03/01/the-credit-card-sized-gameboy/
I thought this was a news site? YOU do the research, and tell US.
If you had bothered to google it, you would have found : https://www.tindie.com/products/bateske/arduboy/
9+ hours of playtime on standard batteries and 1 hour on rechargables.
Coin-sized batteries are that poor when it comes to recharging? What's the point then?
I'm an avid gamer, but at my age, for me to play this thing, I'd need bifocals for my bifocals. What is that, like quadfocals?
I blame online porn.
You are welcome on my lawn.
... that I made 2 years ago: http://www.limpkin.fr/index.php?post/2012/09/15/My-new-business-card
'Arduino' and 'RPi' and all this other shit is fooling dumb kids into believing they're doing electronics when all they're doing is the 21st century version of writing little shit programs in BASIC. You talk to them, and you quickly find out that they believe you can't do ANYTHING without a microcontroller, and that if you're telling them otherwise that you must be trying to trick them or something. Furthermore they actually believe that anything that you CAN do without a micorcontroller must not be worth doing in the first place, or that 'you must be an old guy or something'. I fear for the future of technology in general, when these kids view electronics as like playing with Lego (just snap blocks together) when there has to be someone to CREATE the blocks in the first place. So fuck all this Arduino shit, it sucks ass. Kids should be building radios, and learning how transistor amplifiers work, and other REAL electronics, not screwing around with these stupid little playtoys. Once they learn real electronics then if they must they can play with microcontrollers but not before. Oh and go right ahead and mark me as 'troll' or 'flamebait' or whatever you fucks want to do, I don't care.
and I saw it on instructables 5 years ago, its an old idea
For $50, you get a tiny monochrome screen, a D-pad and TWO WHOLE BUTTONS, and a non-rechargeable 9 hour battery.
A coin cell battery? This is 2014, and it doesn't have a rechargeable battery? He did mention you can get rechargeable coin cells, but they only last an hour. So with moderate use, you're gonna be spending a few bucks a week on coin cell batteries, not to mention having to carry around spares with you.
Yes, it's nice and thin, but nobody is gonna stick this in their wallet unless he invents a flexible PCB.
Or, for $30, you can get a brand new LG smartphone from Walmart, running Android 4.4, with a 3.5" color touchscreen, a dual core 1.2ghz processor, camera, wifi, bluetooth, GPS, accelerometers, speakers and a microphone, several gigs of storage space, and a RECHARGEABLE battery that will last 10 hours heavily used and over a week in standby. I guess the only downside is that touchscreens aren't as good as D-pads and physical buttons for games, but you could always buy a USB controller and get a lot more buttons. And while it IS about the size of a credit card, but half an inch thick. And instead of shelling out a few bucks a week on coin cell batteries, you could spend that money on a straight talk cellular plan and get UNLIMITED INTERNET ACCESS!
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
There are alternatives. Recently got myself one of these, http://gamebuino.com/ Nice little piece of HW.
Really? That's not a sales pitch, it's a warning bell.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Damn it all to hell!
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