This is such a neat project! I'm sure your kids will look back on it fondly. I recently made an mp3 player for my kiddo that he can trigger with RFID cards (like a yotto, but without all the proprietary nonsense).
Have you thought about putting the flash on another board and basically making a cartridge system for this? Homebrew Gameboy!
I thought about it, but I'm also wary of over-engineering stuff like that: you get sucked into designing a "platform" to accommodate all possible use cases, but the use cases never materialize. The bulk of the effort is actually writing fun games (or other software).
As for your Li-poly question: it probably gets 50+ hours of run time with 2xAAA, so it wasn't particularly worthwhile to make it more complicated and more explodey with rechargeable batteries. I might do some Li-poly charging article down the line. I think the main risk are manufacturing defects or physical damage to the batteries themselves.
Oh one other thing. I noticed this runs off alkaline batteries. Honestly, I miss the days of just being able to pop in new batteries rather than dealing with a rats nest of chargers and cables. That said, if you were so inclined, I'd be interested in an article on adding lipo and a charging circuit. When I briefly looked into this, it seemed like a minefield. Some accusations flying around that cheap charging modules from china were doing it wrong or using counterfeit components, and the stakes are high when we're dealing with lipos. So a definitive article on this would be very useful to me!
This is such a neat project! I'm sure your kids will look back on it fondly. I recently made an mp3 player for my kiddo that he can trigger with RFID cards (like a yotto, but without all the proprietary nonsense).
Have you thought about putting the flash on another board and basically making a cartridge system for this? Homebrew Gameboy!
I thought about it, but I'm also wary of over-engineering stuff like that: you get sucked into designing a "platform" to accommodate all possible use cases, but the use cases never materialize. The bulk of the effort is actually writing fun games (or other software).
As for your Li-poly question: it probably gets 50+ hours of run time with 2xAAA, so it wasn't particularly worthwhile to make it more complicated and more explodey with rechargeable batteries. I might do some Li-poly charging article down the line. I think the main risk are manufacturing defects or physical damage to the batteries themselves.
Oh one other thing. I noticed this runs off alkaline batteries. Honestly, I miss the days of just being able to pop in new batteries rather than dealing with a rats nest of chargers and cables. That said, if you were so inclined, I'd be interested in an article on adding lipo and a charging circuit. When I briefly looked into this, it seemed like a minefield. Some accusations flying around that cheap charging modules from china were doing it wrong or using counterfeit components, and the stakes are high when we're dealing with lipos. So a definitive article on this would be very useful to me!