Got my Gamebuino, and one very happy kid for a while.
My 12 years old son was very excited, waiting for it and willing to program some games with it (he used scratch, we do some arduino robotics together).
I think I faced all the problems I read here, they are almost solved, but let's take a tour :
- within the first 5 minutes, trying the games on the SD, several games where not working and killed the loader.
After flashing the file, all I got was a blank screen.
btn C + reboot did the job, but some games where KO.
Right now, some of the games still don't work (all copied back from the github archive)
The next step will be to reformat FAT16 the SD card and/or try another one (not sure to have such a small one)
- After less than 10 minutes, the screen was going black - The classic problem.
Did try the settings, didn't help. Pressing the screen there or there showed a little change, but was not usable.
After searching the forum, I decided to clean the contacts.
Went fine, cleaned them, rebuilt the console (Doesn't scare me, but I do understand people that are afraid to broke something)
As for now, the screen problem is not yet fixed. It's very sensitive.
After cleaning, it went black again.
The little plastic piece on top of the screen was pushing too hard, the PCB was very curved.
I reduced it's height, used some rubber on the other side to pinch the screen against the PCB without damaging the PCB.
A little better, but always very sensitive, hardly usable.
I took it apart again, cleaned again.
Saw that some of the PCB contacts had a notable amount of solder, other nearly none: that makes a height difference between the contacts,
and I guess the rubber connector can't match such a difference with a reasonable pressure.
I'm wondering if I should remove the extra solder or put some more on the other contacts, but looks a little tricky.
What do you think ?
As per my experience and what I read here, this screen is the main hardware point of failure of the console.
- Next, I switched off the console with a game running (not flashing the eeprom).
The console wouldn't boot again.
btn C + reset wasn't helping this time, bootloader was gone.
I setup my arduino IDE with the board definitions, was able to upload a game to the console, and from there, loader was fine again.
(sometimes have to press C several times. first time, "flashing..." then game again, second time "flashing.." then back to game, third time "flashing..." and finally loader is there.)
But now, btn-C + reset does not work anymore.
Not funny when the games on the SD continue to bug.
So, I'll have to burn the bootloader. I will try the Jonnection bootloader : viewtopic.php?f=12&t=932
This is doable. I got a USBASP device, and know how to do. But this seems a daunting task for an Arduino newbie.
Hope it won't crash again. You don't always have a pc and a USBASP with you.
- Last thing, my son was asking why the "RX" led wasn't blinking while uploading a sketch.
Well, the led is not there. To be more precise, is was soldered, but broken somewhere before my house, so no RX led.
No big deal, was not an important feature.
So, am I happy with this little toy ?
Well, surprisingly the answer is YES !
The goal was for my son to learn to program.
Programming games, moreover on a console, is very appealing and in a few hours he managed to do many things.
Using the English API doc, he was able to play sounds, create and display sprites, make them move,
use the collision detection functions (BTW, when using with 2 objects of different size, place the small one first, else some cases of collision are not ok)
There is an enormous amount of work within the GB libraries, and I think it's what makes it great.
Rodot did a very good job putting that together, and I'm very thankful for that.
Now, the physical screen remains the big problem. With it and the low quality sd card I seem to have, the console is more of a dev prototype than a usable console.
I know what it is to work with Chinese parts, refurbished screens aso; I'm not throwing the stone.
We (my son and I) are just a little disappointed that it is not a seamless experience (especially the hardware parts - screen and sd).
I hope that those problems will be solved for everyone, and that the next batch of GB will be more stable. It deserves to.
Continue the good job !