3 New Gameboy Projects from Makerfabs
There once we have a post of Gameboys in Production, by Makerfabs, half a year ago. In the past half a year, we are glad to join in more Gameboys projects.

1. The MintyPi Gameboy

MintyPi is a gaming console housed inside of an Altoid mint tin, a perfect little game console based on Raspberry Pi. It is small enough to fit inside of a pocket, also capable of playing any of your favorite old-school consoles (including NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, and more).

 

 

2. The ESPlay Micro Gameboy

Everyone loves the ESP32 chip, it's a wonderful chip from Espressif with great functionality and really mature on the software development side. This project most inspired by Odroid Go and Pocketsprite, so why make a new one despite buying one of them? Well, I know those devices are great and have well community support, but some of them had some issues that I don't really like. Odroid Go had shared its SPI for both display and sd card, and they need the patched esp-IDF version for it, and sd card not work very well in SPI mode, at least in my experience. Then pocket sprite only has the esp32 WROOM module without psram and also without sd card support so limited portability to save my collection of games.

The ESPlay Micro Gameboy features:
• ESP32 WROVER, Dual-core processor with Integrated 4MB Flash + 4MB PSRAM
• Integrated WIFI and Bluetooth 4 BLE
• 2.4" ILI9341 TFT Panel
• More button (expanded via PCF8574 I2C GPIO)
• Micro SD slot connected to SDMMC Host in 1 Line Mode for saving GPIO pin
• Integrated I2S DAC via UDA1334A
• Integrated USB to Serial for programming and debugging using CH340C
• Built-in TP4056 Li-Po charger
• Planned ability to run LVGL UI both of C and Micropython ( lv_micropython)

Note that there only the PCBA, SD card, and USB cable, without case and battery, you will need a lipo battery, or USB charger, to start to play. Makerfabs is also designing some cases for this, but need some more time for us to make a reasonable solution.

3. PewPew for Python Programming
Actually, PewPew is not a playboy/ GameBoy, but it can be, with skilled Python programming, we say it “Python-based micro game console”:

The PewPew is intended for the Python workshop. Pewpew Standalone GameBoy is a cheap cost & price, which makes it OK for large workshop learning… By the way, you will have a unique opportunity of becoming a full-stack game developer: starting with assembling and soldering your game console, through a simple bouncing ball tutorial, to a full-fledged game for a PewPew, all in just 2-4 hours, on 2019/8/31 and 9/1 at https://wiki.sgmk-ssam.ch/wiki/Flick_the_World_2019.

If you have designed cool and creative hardware projects that need production, or planning to launch your project into a crowdfunding campaign, pls contact service@makerfabs.com with your detailed request, we would be glad to help with PCBA prototyping and small batch PCB assembly, we can help to sell on Makerfabs on-line store with free drop shipping service.