PicoPlay

PicoPlay is a hand-held retro game console with built-in multiplayer support.

info

Author: Ștefănescu Andrei-Cezar

GitHub Project Link: https://github.com/UPB-PMRust-Students/project-andrewstephengames

Description

PicoPlay is a hand-held device which allows players to enjoy a multiplayer in a tiny retro package. Users can either choose to play a classic singleplayer game or the baked in multiplayer game called Retro Heroes. Multiplayer is done either among PicoPlay clients or between PicoPlay and web browser clients. To power the experience, a server binary is run on a cloud computer, which the players connect to.

Motivation

My motivation to embark upon this project came from some of my previous personal projects, which all have a retro theme (see [1] [2]. Since I got into programming because of my passion for retro games, I am motivated to build a device from the ground up that includes the best games that I've written over the years, and allows for a solid platform for any future ports.

Architecture

Basic diagram

Main components used:

1. Raspberry Pi Pico 2W

   • the platform that we use

   • Connections:

     • 5 buttons, one buzzer, one LED on GPIO

     • LCD touch screen on SPI

     • Game server on LAN (optional)

2. GPIO components

   • Left button: GP18

   • OK button: GP19

   • Right button: GP20

   • Up button: GP21

   • Down button: GP22

   • Green LED boot indicator: GP16

   • Buzzer: GP17

3. Touch screen module

   • 2.8" LCD module with the ILI9341 controller: SPI

Log

Week 5 - 11 May

During this week I've wired up and soldered most of the components, such as the screen and buttons. Other than that, I worked on a side-project for the Students Scientific Communications Session, which helped me learn how to do multiplayer in Rust.

Week 12 - 18 May

During this week I prepared for the hardware milestone by checking my electronic connections and finding several bad connections for SPI, which I've fixed, both physically and in the electric schematic below.

Week 19 - 25 May

In the final week I've done most of the programming. I've written a quick and dirty server for Retro Heroes, and I designed a menu for the console. My controllers unfortunately borked this week, so I had to do the programming in the embedded_graphics_simulator until I could get new ones.

Once I solved my hardware fault. I went to work by porting the Retro Heroes client to the console. I made several stylistic changes, in order to account for the different form factor, different controls and limitations with embedded graphics, however the underlying client works the same as the web client.

Hardware

The hardware consists of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2W microcontroller and various peripherals connected to it.

There are five buttons connected that control the graphical interface: Left, Ok, Right, Up and Down. Also, a small green LED is attached, indicating the boot status of the board.

The most important peripherals attached are the ILI9341 touch screen module and the buzzer, which allow for an embedded game development platform. Every single peripheral is attached via GPIO, except for the screen, which communicates with the board via SPI. On the screen we draw a menu, allowing the user to select from a list of games to play. Details can be seen in the figures below.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Schematics

Electrical schematic

Bill of Materials

Device	Usage	Price
Raspberry Pi Pico 2W	The microcontroller	39.66 RON
2.8" SPI LCD Module with ILI9341 Controller (240 x 320 px)	Displaying graphics	69.99 RON
Passive Buzzer	Buzzer	0.99 RON
4x Red Button with Round Cover	Button	7.96 RON
Blue Button with Round Cover	Button	1.99 RON
Plusivo 3 mm and 5 mm Diffused LED Light Emitting Diode Assortment Kit	LEDs and resistors	26.99 RON
2x 20 cm 10p Male-Female Wires	Male to female wires	7.98 RON
10 cm 40p Male-Male Wires	Male to male wires	4.99 RON

Software

Library	Description	Usage
embassy-rp	The embassy embedded framework	Initializing and interacting with peripherals
embassy-executor	An async/await executor designed for embedded usage	Asynchronous programming
embassy-time	Timekeeping, delays and timeouts.	Delays
embassy-sync	Synchronization primitives and data structures with async support	Synchronizing tasks
ili9341	ILI9341 display driver	Controlling the display
embedded-graphics	2D graphics library that is focused on memory constrained embedded devices	Drawing graphics without using any buffers
embedded-hal-async	An asynchronous Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for embedded systems	Asynchronous hardware access
gpio	GPIO management	Controlling GPIO pins
pwm	PWM module	Controlling the buzzer and the intensity of the boot LED
embassy_lab_utils	Embassy lab library	Lab code for networking
cyw43	cyw43 wireless chip	Wireless driver
heapless	heapless	No std strings
rand_core	rand_core	Random with no std
biski64	biski64 randomizer	Library to interface with rand_core

Links

1. Retro Heroes
2. Pixper
3. PicoPlay console demo