Yeah, that's still some way to go ! But now I have more free time, so it should progress pretty quickly
About the RGB back-light : it's an excellent idea, but it's not possible for several reasons
- the RGB led would be too big to fit
- I'm out of outputs
- the PCB is already pretty dense, not sure I could fit anything more (it's 2 layers)
But again, it's really a good idea. I was thinking about having different back-light colors available, but it won't be able to change
...a possible way to implement that would be to make RGB LED modules to plug in the I2C ports, and light the screen with them. Moreover the Gamebuino's PCB is white, so it would change the whole console color. It might be fun, I'll look into that... later.
About an early release : I tried to give early models of Gamebuino, and a few weeks later I changed all the pin mapping... Conclusion : no early release before the final hardware version.
But once on kickstarter, I will probably set the minimum quantity to 100 Gamebuinos. 10 of them will be "for early developers", and will be shipped before the "mass-production", as soon as the kickstarter campaign reaches the minimum quantity. Sounds good to you ?
About the 4 layers of grey, I know about this, but it's barely possible... Currently the screen is refreshed 20 times per seconds, it takes 20% of CPU. To have 4 levels of gray it would take to much CPU time.
Moreover, the micro-controller have a complete buffer of the screen stored in the ram. If you need 4 different values/pixel instead of 1, it won't fit the RAM (for now it uses about 1/4 of the 2KB of RAM).
A possible solution could be to use a larger, faster micro-controller. But it would increase the price and complexity, and the thing about Gamebuino is not to have insane performances
Gamebuino is based on a atmega328 (like an Arduino UNO), the same micro-controller than arduino, this way it's easy to re-use code and find libraries.
Thanks for the suggestions !