Pseudonymous maker “mars91” has built a pocket-friendly handheld console, designed to run the classic game of Snake or the once-viral Flappy Bird on an RGB LED matrix — under the control of a Microchip ATtiny1616 microcontroller.
“A pocket-sized gamer that uses an 8×8 RGB pixel matrix to play Snake, Flappy Bird, and any other retro games you can design,” mars91 explains of their creation. “I think bright RGB LEDs look great, and wanted to create something that showcases them. I started with the classic game of Snake and ended up with both Snake and Flappy Bird, all programmed with minimal components.”
The custom-built circuit board — which includes the source code for Snake on its silkscreen layer — is built around a Microchip ATtiny1616 microcontroller, linked to five buttons: four direction buttons and a fifth that can be used to switch between the two games loaded in the firmware, or more if you add your own. There are pads for an Adafruit DotStar 8×8 RGB LED matrix, a power switch, and a CR123A battery holder at the rear — along with connections for an UPDI programmer, the board lacking USB connectivity for programming.
“The LED matrix asks for an electrolytic capacitor due to the potential quick and high current draws when many LEDs are turned on at once,” mars91 explains of one particular design quirk. “This game only lights up a few LEDs at a time (unless you’re good at Snake), so I chose not to use a capacitor. I have tested this board for hours and mine works with out them.”
The full guide, including source code, is available on Instructables; board Gerbers have been uploaded to PCBWay under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
