microcat - The ultimative ARM based handheld game console

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Wi-Fi could be handy for multiplayer games, but for such old school hardware, maybe linked play could be a better option, via USB or something. Given the community nature of this console, I doubt there would be many multiplayer games on it anyway.


I'm still gonna buy it even if it lacks wifi.

[semiprocoder]

I say keep the wifi. It won't be able to do too much, due to the limited ram in the cpu, but it will allow for some fun like pong online or something. And since most people using the microcat(at least for now), are calc users, it will provide a sense of unity.

[DarkestEx]

I say keep the wifi. It won't be able to do too much, due to the limited ram in the cpu, but it will allow for some fun like pong online or something. And since most people using the microcat(at least for now), are calc users, it will provide a sense of unity.

Wi-Fi could be handy for multiplayer games, but for such old school hardware, maybe linked play could be a better option, via USB or something. Given the community nature of this console, I doubt there would be many multiplayer games on it anyway.


I'm still gonna buy it even if it lacks wifi.

Well after all I am pretty sure that I will keep the WiFi as its a nice feature in my opinion. It is only about 2-3 euros and even though it tends to be unstable, I am sure that we get it to a usable state. Actually I am not sure whether the chip or just the two firmwares that I tried were unstable (Frankenstein worked just fine and was stable; nodeMCU and the original AT firmware are very unstable).

About WiFi games, I am sure real time games are possible, but they are hard. Turn based ones will work in any case.
Estimated speed of the internet is about 50 - 100KB/s. So it is possible to use some easy binary format to do real time multiplayer in some games.

About RAM, internet won't use any ram at all. It will all be done in the ESP 8266s processor. I will program it to make internet things way easier, and it will contain the network stack. The ESP will be user reprogrammable. The arm can program the esp at any time.

I already want to say thanks in advance to anyone who's interested in buying or supporting it
50 units need to be sold so that we can get the project running. With the base model we do make a calculated loss. At 50 units the single unit (45 euro) would make us loose 30%. That's why the starter kit (59 euro) is a little more expensive than it needs to be.
The starter kit really is for people who want to support us additionally or who are beginners. The base kit will require preparing and an own SD card (I will make a program to do so). The starter kit includes a SD card already prepared, a pouch (probably), an mini USB cable and a USB host cable (to hook up keyboard and mouse).

Another thing that we were thinking is having an x2 mode, that allows allows drawing inside the first 64*64 pixels and everything will be scaled up while drawn. That mode could be toggled on and off. The reason why this mode could be done is, that the display has such a high resolution, that we could afford this mode for readability and visibility of things.

[DarkestEx]

We made some progress

Below are some pictures of the display working. Iwert wrote some code to test the display on the Arduino Due with the exact same palette and colors that the microcat will have. These images give a good preview of what the microcat's screen will behave and look like.
The diagonal lines are caused by the camera, they are not visible to the human eye.

[spoiler=Images]





[/spoiler]

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I definitively think that you should try breaking even from the start. Losing money on 50 consoles would definitively add up fast to the money you already invested so far. Unless this includes what you have invested so far?

Also I like the progress so far. I'm glad to see that the hardware is progressing. How much completion percentage would you give to the prototype's internal hardware without the case so far?


Also a 64x64 mode would be cool for people would want to go even more old school or have more speed.

[DarkestEx]

I definitively think that you should try breaking even from the start. Losing money on 50 consoles would definitively add up fast to the money you already invested so far. Unless this includes what you have invested so far?

Also I like the progress so far. I'm glad to see that the hardware is progressing. How much completion percentage would you give to the prototype's internal hardware without the case so far?


Also a 64x64 mode would be cool for people would want to go even more old school or have more speed.

No, this is actual loss. We have about 130 euros that we have to cover using the overshoot in the starter kits price.
But at 100 consoles its all covered. As we can't change the price during the campaign, we want to stay as cheap as possible with the 50 units.

Well we have basically like 10% progress in the prototype. The actual processor is not yet fully working and I haven't hooked up some components yet.
But the basic plan is done, but I haven't copied it into KiCad so far.

[semiprocoder]

I think you should just make it so that anyone can pay anything they want for the microcat to support it, starting at 45 euros. It will be like the donations you can give to processing to support the project. Also maybe make the starting price 50 euros, just in case. Moreover, why does this use usb mini, not micro or usb c? Is it more expensive?

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I definitively think that you should try breaking even from the start. Losing money on 50 consoles would definitively add up fast to the money you already invested so far. Unless this includes what you have invested so far?

Also I like the progress so far. I'm glad to see that the hardware is progressing. How much completion percentage would you give to the prototype's internal hardware without the case so far?


Also a 64x64 mode would be cool for people would want to go even more old school or have more speed.

No, this is actual loss. We have about 130 euros that we have to cover using the overshoot in the starter kits price.
But at 100 consoles its all covered. As we can't change the price during the campaign, we want to stay as cheap as possible with the 50 units.

Well we have basically like 10% progress in the prototype. The actual processor is not yet fully working and I haven't hooked up some components yet.
But the basic plan is done, but I haven't copied it into KiCad so far.

I see. I'm definitively hoping for the completion of this project and that it gets attention over big sites once it reaches a state where it can play actual games and have some firmware allowing to launch them. The losses would then be turned into profit (or at least enough money to cover the initial development costs/losses).

Also will the console have some protection against bricking if someone plays a game then pulls the SD card during gameplay? People normally would use common sense about that, but kids might not necessarily know.

[DarkestEx]

I think you should just make it so that anyone can pay anything they want for the microcat to support it, starting at 45 euros. It will be like the donations you can give to processing to support the project. Also maybe make the starting price 50 euros, just in case. Moreover, why does this use usb mini, not micro or usb c? Is it more expensive?

Well we would really like to do it this way, but kickstarter or similar sites sadly don't support it. We could though make some special badges to support us.
About the 45 euro, we could still go up to 50 in case something goes wrong, but if we sell more than 100, we would have a drastic decrease in total cost while keeping the old retail price.
We choose mini USB over micro USB, because mini USB is a lot more durable than the fragile micro USB. We don't want the connector to shear off under any circumstances.

I definitively think that you should try breaking even from the start. Losing money on 50 consoles would definitively add up fast to the money you already invested so far. Unless this includes what you have invested so far?

Also I like the progress so far. I'm glad to see that the hardware is progressing. How much completion percentage would you give to the prototype's internal hardware without the case so far?


Also a 64x64 mode would be cool for people would want to go even more old school or have more speed.

No, this is actual loss. We have about 130 euros that we have to cover using the overshoot in the starter kits price.
But at 100 consoles its all covered. As we can't change the price during the campaign, we want to stay as cheap as possible with the 50 units.

Well we have basically like 10% progress in the prototype. The actual processor is not yet fully working and I haven't hooked up some components yet.
But the basic plan is done, but I haven't copied it into KiCad so far.

I see. I'm definitively hoping for the completion of this project and that it gets attention over big sites once it reaches a state where it can play actual games and have some firmware allowing to launch them. The losses would then be turned into profit (or at least enough money to cover the initial development costs/losses).

Also will the console have some protection against bricking if someone plays a game then pulls the SD card during gameplay? People normally would use common sense about that, but kids might not necessarily know.

About the 64x64, they don't give any speed increase at all. Only a slight speed decrease. But they significantly lower the ram usage by up to 50%.

I do really hope for this project to succeed. We will finish it under any circumstances. The only real problem is selling it, as we don't know about laws. And of course do we hope to get the development costs back, but even if we don't, we still learned a lot.

The console won't brick, if the SD card is removed while the console is turned on. But the SD card might corrupt. The console itself is never turned of completely; it's always in a low power standby mode with all peripherals disabled. People could even wake it up at a specific time if they want to. The low power standby only draws about 5uA which is even lower than the natural discharge rate of a LiPo so it won't be noticeable.
Even if the console gets powered off during firmware flashing, we want to provide an option to unbrick it by placing the firmware file on the SD card and rebooting. Also we want to use Atmels USB or Serial bootloader that is burned into the internal ROM to be able to recover it.

[novenary]

We choose mini USB over micro USB, because mini USB is a lot more durable than the fragile micro USB. We don't want the connector to shear off under any circumstances.

This is a good decision. Micro USB is hardly thinner than mini and it's extremely fragile, mini feels very solid on comparison. Type C is a good thing but it's not popular enough yet to be used for this. Also pretty much everyone should have a mini USB cable at home.

[semiprocoder]

I thought that micro usb has more insertion cycles than mini usb. Something about micro usb having twice the lifetime of mino usb for plugging in and out.

[novenary]

It's supposed to be the case but in practice breaking a micro USB connector is very easy. I broke countless cables and even though I haven't broken any female connectors a lot of people have. Never heard of that for mini USB.

[p4nix]

But maybe their are less reports about broken mini because micro is more spread today. Anyway, I don't care about which type of USB it is, but I also never broke a usb female/male adapter.

[novenary]

Mini USB is still very widespread and was used for over a decade before micro got popularized (even though mini is deprecated since 2007). I haven't had a single case of a cable breaking. But we're getting way off topic here.

[DarkestEx]

We could always switch to micro USB but mini USB is just stronger and they both support USB OTG.