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Early Sport Boy screens had been well-known for being small. They appear even smaller in comparison with right this moment’s transportable gadgets! An aspiring artist and retro gaming hacker, kgsws, created a 9-Display Sport Boy Multiscreen to beat this dimension situation!
This multiscreen undertaking began with reverse engineering the Sport Boy’s LCD protocol. As soon as kgsws knew tips on how to decode that bus, the following step was to seize the video and reproduce it utilizing an ESP32.
Whereas I2S is best recognized for interfacing with audio gadgets like microphones and audio system, kgsws used it for the Sport Boy LCD. By wanting on the LCD’s alerts on an oscilloscope, it was clear the ESP32’s I2S interface might seize the Sport Boy’s show knowledge. At first, some video games had graphical glitches, which including an OR-gate to mix the information sign with the horizontal sync solved.
ESP32 module related to Sport Boy’s show pins (📷: kgsws YouTube)
In a single demo, kgsws makes an attempt to seize the display from one Sport Boy whereas wirelessly transmitting the information to a different. Sadly, the ESP32’s restricted RAM simply couldn’t lower it. So, a Raspberry Pi grew to become the brand new receiver.
Including the Raspberry Pi meant the undertaking might go to the following stage. On this case, one display become 9! Naturally, one use of those screens can be a clock. However, if organized in a matrix, they’ll reproduce a bigger show, corresponding to mirroring an precise Sport Boy taking part in a sport.
Can it run DOOM? (📷: kgsws YouTube)
After all, no {hardware} undertaking can be full with out demonstrating it operating Doom. On this case, DOOM II runs on a PC, not a Sport Boy, whereas utilizing the show matrix as its display.
This YouTube video walks by means of kgsws’ means of determining the protocol, testing with the ESP, after which including the Raspberry Pi. It is a wonderful overview of the undertaking.
The entire code is obtainable in this GitHub Repo. So if you wish to construct your individual, as kgsws says, all it’s essential do is sacrifice 10 Sport Boys.
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