Why not Raspberry Pi?

Published on 2017-08-06 in PewPew FeatherWing.

It seems that I have been blogged at  https://hackaday.com/2017/08/06/hackaday-prize-best-product-finalist- pewpew/  and there are some questions as to whether it makes sense to do what I do when there is already a Raspberry Pi and all its retro-console builds.

Well, this is a little bit different. Sure, lots of game consoles using a Raspberry Pi out there. In fact, I have build one myself recently with Ye Olde Nowt and I have to say that it is great fun. But it’s not very good for teaching for the following reasons (in no particular order):

  1. You have to start by teaching Linux. That’s a challenge already.

  2. Long booting time.

  3. Short battery time.

  4. SD cards get damaged when you power it off without proper shutdown, and then random things start to happen.

  5. Setting up the screen and inputs is a complex and somewhat hacky process. Not something you want to teach to a group of 14 year olds.

  6. Lots of existing emulators and ready games for this system. That discourages from making your own.

  7. No really good and simple game programming library for Python, although PyGame Zero helps here.

  8. Relatively high-resolution color graphics forces you to find game art somewhere and distracts from making the actual game.

  9. Raspberry Pi is not that cheap, if you consider the cost of the SD card, the screen, the power source, all the cables and adapters, etc.

On the other hand, I’m aiming at something that will be:

  1. Working out of the box, without special configuration. Connect to your computer, copy two files on it, and you are ready to play. Edit the files in place, and make your own game.

  2. Easy to fix. In the worst case just erase the memory, and you have your working device back.

  3. Simple. The library for it only has four functions (and one of them is for setting the brightness, so you don’t even need to learn that one), and a single object with three methods. You can fit the documentation for that on a single page of paper.

  4. Portable. It’s the size of an AA battery and runs on a single battery charge for hours.

  5. Powerful enough to be fun and engaging.

Of course, at some point you will want to switch to a real computer, pick up something like PyGame and continue from where you left, making more complex games. But I think this will be a really good stepping stone for starting.