Maker and recreation developer Kayden has created a pocket-sized gaming handheld utilizing our favourite microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico, and has housed it in one of the vital fascinating and green-friendly containers: an previous Altoids tin. Kayden has appropriately dubbed his creation the mintyPico, and demonstrates not solely the ultimate product but additionally shared a construct tutorial for anybody considering recreating the mission.
The hand held works simply as you would possibly anticipate. It has a display for video output and a sequence of buttons for enter management. Along with buttons for gameplay enter, it additionally has a button for low-power mode that disables the show and reduces the processor clock frequency by 5x.
This isn’t Kayden’s first DIY recreation mission and doesn’t appear to be will probably be his final, both. Over at his official YouTube channel, you’ll discover a historical past of recreation tasks together with some that combine synthetic intelligence. After perusing by way of his catalog of earlier work, it’s no shock he landed on the Pico-powered handheld.
As a substitute of utilizing a daily Altoids tin, Kayden is definitely utilizing an Altoids Smalls tin which is notably smaller than the regular-sized one. Inside is a 1.3-inch OLED display, together with a small 100 mAh LiPo battery for energy. The principle driver is definitely a Pimoroni Pico Lipo slightly than a regular Pico module. It additionally features a sequence of buttons and a customized 3D-printed mounting piece to maintain the {hardware} positioned inside.
It wouldn’t be a gaming console with out some video games in fact, and Kayden has hooked us up with all the supply code he’s utilizing for the demo. You’ll find all the Circuit Python code used on this mission over at GitHub, together with a breakdown of the mission’s building particulars. As well as, you’ll additionally discover hyperlinks to all the {hardware} he used to assemble the ultimate construct.
If you wish to recreate this Raspberry Pi mission your self or make one thing related, take a look at the unique mission demo over at YouTube, and make sure to comply with Kayden for extra cool tasks or any future updates on this one.