Gamebuino clones what-if question

[jonnection]

Hello Rodot

We were building a Gamebuino clone with my kids, slipped from the path and came up with a quite different design (roughly same size) and slightly different BOM. The veroboard prototype and cardboard mockup (about 50% done) is a pretty fun and workable design in my opinion, and I'm already playing with the idea of designing a custom PCB for it. This means that (should I do it) I'd probably end up with some extra stuff. I'm sure that you know that manufacturing one piece of something professionally is extremely expensive / impossible due to minimum order quantities and such. My intent or goal is not to cannibalize the core project, I was thinking a kind of a side-track in the spirit of the Lilypad / Gravitech Nano. I'm nowhere near the point of ordering anything, but if I know that such a project will be unwelcome, I won't bother to fire up my pro/engineer ...

So, what is your general feeling about the possibility of a Gamebuino-compatible hardware project emerging ? You have a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license specified in the software, but I see no mention of licenses elsewhere.

If this has (didn't find it myself) been discussed before, my apologies.

[adekto]

im not going to comment on any legal concerns (although i don't think there aren't any apart that u cant call it a gamebuino)
i just like to state forth a few rules on the gamebuino compatible aspect, this is has to be attended to els we will get software incompatibilities mainly being the 7 button spec with the corresponding pin io, the screen size 84x48 and a way's to emulate other inputs games might use (battery charge, light sensor, sd card)

[rodot]

Hello Jonnection,
What feature would you add in your clone? Can't it be added with an extension module?
I'm not home right now, sorry for my brevity, I'll answer you in detail later

[albertinjo]

I plan to make my own copy of gamebuino, I already ordered some parts from e-bay. I am going to add an earphone jack and a bigger battery. It would not look as pretty as the original, but I will do it because I like building stuff.

You should think about making a DIY kit where you could solder your own gamebuino.

[ripper121]

I plan to make my own copy of gamebuino, I already ordered some parts from e-bay. I am going to add an earphone jack and a bigger battery. It would not look as pretty as the original, but I will do it because I like building stuff.

You should think about making a DIY kit where you could solder your own gamebuino.

Sounds good, make a Non SMD version of it and order some pcb´s, so you have to sell only the pcb´s and the other parts can we buy everywhere

[rodot]

@Jonnection: Gamebuino's software is open-source, and the hardware as well (except that I won't release the layout files). So of course you can make a Gamebuino clone, I won't sue you! But I'm not sure it's a good idea as it would make it confusing for people looking for a Gamebuino. What is different with your model? Can't you add these features using extension modules?

[DFX2KX]

If I where to make a clone that wasn't exact/had extra features, I'd want it to work perfectly with the standard fare of games.

Any extra buttons/features would be hooked up to the i2c bus in parallel, and hopefully would match up with the official modules. So my "clone-buino with built-in rumble" would look the same to a game, as "Gamebuino with rumble module installed". I'd still have two open i2c ports then. That's why I'm waiting to see what the specs for the modules are, before actually trying to build one. It would work similar to the N64 controller I had, which had built-in rumble, as well as a rumble/memory socket.

That's not to say that, having started to learn C, I haven't thought about making something altogether different, that's in a similar vein. (a color screen, or more powerful processor would make this 'clone' an altogether different beast. The libraries wouldn't work, and you'd have to write everything yourself)

[rodot]

...still no answers from Jonnection?

@DFX2KX: The extension modules will do all you need

For those who just want a through hole version of the PCB to be able to solder their Gamebuino themselves, I may design one... but that's one of the lowest priority for now ^^

[jonnection]

...still no answers from Jonnection?

@DFX2KX: The extension modules will do all you need

For those who just want a through hole version of the PCB to be able to solder their Gamebuino themselves, I may design one... but that's one of the lowest priority for now ^^

Sorry for the delay in answering, just returning from a work trip. I didn't have anything drastic in mind. I came up with a trick idea how to manufacture a different kind of case. I also consider powering from aaa-batteries instead of lipo, set screen bl and possibly contrast manually. This ofcourse requires a custom pcb. Probably some sort of diy throughhole kit or bare pcb and case. Case was the original idea that I started on. Prototype is almost ready, I'll show it if it doesn't fry immediately (havent had time to check connections before initial power-on)

[jonnection]

I got the prototype running. Had some problems with uploading due to reset line quirks (I'm using PL2303 instead of the FTDI chip). Also buttons got mixed, but that'll be easy to fix.

Some test results, now that I have an actual piece of kit to play with:

I took the rotating cube from the tvout library demoPAL example sketch. The only thing I changed was TV.draw_line commands to gb.display.drawLine and the screen clearing command. Cube size was halved from 50 units to 25 to fit on the screen.

On TV_out the cube is totally smooth. On the Gamebuino the cube jumps around (default fps).

EDIT: There is a possibility that I haven't understood the update system in the Gamebuino library and thats the reason for the jerky motion.

EDIT 2: it IS the update system. I need to rewrite the cube rotation, the TV_out demo is not suitable for comparison as it is.

EDIT 3: totally smooth now. I figured it out. I need to run gb.update(); all the time... ofcourse. I'll post a video & code later.

As for the issue of Gamebuino-compatible clones: I totally agree Gamebuino name should be reserved for the authentic Rodot products. I hope, however, that the project gives some thought to how it could handle this whole idea of Faux-Gamebuinos in the future in a positive way. "A Gamebuino at heart" - licensing programme or something ?
This is definitely not an urgent issue, but perhaps something that will come up in the future.