gadgetoid

You're speaking my language. This is a shameless self plug but we - that is Pimoroni - are working on 32blit which is an STM32F750-based microcontroller games console that should be up for general sale soooon - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/32blit-retro-i...

Our beta backer tier have been godlike in their ability to make the STM32 do things I'd never thought we'd see... much less see before it's even launched. I mean it already has a Doom port.

I think, compared to the off-the-shelf Emu handhelds on which I cut my teeth (as far back as GP2X and Dingoo A320 days) it's underpowered and overpriced but you're dead on the money that they have a different charm and set of challenges.

MakeCode compiles down to native instructions, IIRC, so it should run on pretty much anything capable of running a screen that meets their - relatively forgiving - specs - https://arcade.makecode.com/hardware/adding

Edit: GP2X not GP32X!

In theory they are. In practise the lack of a test dataset - and the lack of access to their dataset - means it's virtually impossible for a third party to make any significant contribution to the data processing code.

Such an effort would have to start with them voluneering a test dataset and/or schema.

I have asked - https://github.com/MattIPv4/hacktoberfest-data/issues/5

Tried to look for one recently without much luck. The crux of their death seems to be Skype ending support for their smart TV software. They definitely existed, though. And it was also possible to add a camera via USB in some cases.

As someone currently embroiled in a project to motivate people to explore classic videogame development techniques- this is super interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about Pygame/Pygame Zero, though. It feels a little detached from classic C techniques and doesn't present the technical challenges of original hardware. On the up side, it's far more accessible to beginners.

I really enjoyed working through, for example, this Wolfenstein 3D-style raycasting tutorial- https://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html

> The Founding Father once infamously electrocuted himself while trying to kill a turkey with electricity.

I'm pretty sure you only get to "electrocute" yourself once. Especially in 1743.

I wonder- his lack of grounding may just be what saved his life. If the mentioned chain connected to the outsides of both jars were grounded then there might have been a short across his heart.

You can edit the apt sources and cross your fingers. I’ve been told that “do-release-upgrade” has some secret sauce that this method doesn’t replicate- but since it’s not available on Pi I guess the next best thing is manually looking up what package choices changed. I usually roll a new SD card because it’s a lot quicker and less prone to failure.

Easy to learn, hard to master, as simple as opening a browser tab to get it up and running. It was a perfect storm of tight gameplay and low barrier to entry. I also suspect many people hadn’t come across a game like this before- I can’t even name a multiplayer top down shooter like this save for Continuum.

I probably shouldn’t poke fun- but I found it a little bit hilarious that we brought a Pi 4 to its knees on launch day in the Cambridge Pi Store just demoing a web application. The totally enclosed official case is a baffling idea and if memory serves it was a warm day to boot. Reminds me- I still haven’t dremelled holes in mine. The case, not the Pi.

Oh boy, this was an addiction. Just the right mix of classic - Subspace/Continuum - gameplay with the ease of access of a browser game. It felt good to play a game I was half decent at, too. Wrote a Python API, started a Discord server and then life got in the way. Good times, though!

Edit: It’s a little dead these days, but- https://discord.gg/cPVDwRa

I'm not the best judge, but these are really quiet fans. I can hear the ones in my laptop, but don't notice Fan SHIM at all. We've had a couple of customers who have, but a replacement fan has been quiet- guessing it's a tolerance issue with the plastics.

There's a better image here- https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/benchmarking-the-raspberry-pi...

This pretty much lines up with my findings. I popped the pre-installed heat-spreader off and applied a heatsink with noctua thermal paste... basically no difference- step-by-step chaos here: https://twitter.com/Gadgetoid/status/1151442153584910337

Just adding a small fan (trying to avoid blowing our own trumpet too much here) absolutely demolishes the cooling performance of any reasonably-sized heatsink. Presumably there's just not that much passive airflow over something an inch square, even with convection.

I still wonder what would happen if a full desktop-sized heatsink was coupled to the Pi 4's SOC.

Razer? On some models their logo was backlit by the screen backlight- people using their laptops in a business setting seem to love to cover it up.

I always wondered how uptight people would have to be in a meeting to even give the slightest damn about a glowing green snake logo.

I’ve peppered my laptop with stickers. Not out of some desire to promote the services they embody, but rather because it makes my laptop look less appealing to a would-be thief.

I suspect if they'd chosen a regular DisplayPort or HDMI alt-mode they wouldn't have had to shoulder the burden of claims they deviated from the spec. Granted, engineering constraints may have made that impossible but it's clear that people are seeing a "USB Type-C" port on the Switch and making the assumption that it should work with HDMI or DisplayPort alt modes. Just as people see the "USB Type-C" port on the Pi and make the assumption that any USB Type-C power supply will work. I guess the sooner people unlearn that a USB Type-C port indicates any sort of compatibility with a corresponding USB Type-C connector the better.

MyDP appears to be woefully obscure to the point that this misinformation might just as well be the truth for all the difference it makes.

Dell and Lenovo, and probably some other manufacturers besides, are already playing this confusion to their advantage by releasing first-party docks that are guaranteed to work with their laptops.

While I totally understand the dream of “use the same power supply for everything” I really can’t emphasise just how much impact “use the flippin’ official power supply” has in support burden.

The rash of people digging out their dusty old 500mA microUSB chargers for their early Pi’s made “have you tried a good power supply” almost a meme.

The Switch not truly embracing USB Type-C makes me grumpy. I wonder if the - possibly dockless and portable only - Switch 2 will rectify that. Ah- to just use a regular HDMI alt mode cable!

I don’t disagree that they should be recycled (albeit I’d expect a phone to last 3-5 years), but historically all but the best phone chargers have proven to be wholly unsuitable for powering Pi’s. I’m not convinced USB C is poised to change that since charging doesn’t require a continuous, stable supply whereas running a power-hungry CPU does. Ironically most cheap, captive cable phone chargers are exactly the sort of thing that will work in the Pi 4. For varying values of “work.”

It looks like it'll be mitigated (https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/raspberry-pi-4-firmware-updat...), but not necessarily fixed- making a difference of a few degrees. Active cooling makes a huge difference, which is why it baffles me that the official case has no ventilation.

In my experience the ThunderBolt 3 cables are the ones you want to plug into your laptop and route nicely behind it so you can tuck your dock somewhere aesthetically pleasing... but they have a 10cm bend-radius and are only 40cm long.

They're also usually marked with a little ThunderBolt and also perplexingly a little "3" presumably in case there's a ThunderBolt 4 sometime in the future that's mad enough not to release with its own connector specification.

I think the problem is that people see a USB Type-C port and expect everything with a USB Type-C connector to work in it, which has and never will be the case with USB Type-C connectors.

If you think this is bad, go ask PlanetCom what the heck "Pump Express" is and why USB Type-C PD power supplies wont charge their phone ;)

Ever since the very first model, sub-par, underrated power supplies have been responsible for a good slice of tech support issues with the Pi. It wouldn't be a real Pi launch without power issues.

IIRC the Pi 3B+ was butting up against (if not exceeding) the maximum rated current for the microUSB port, so I believe the switch to USB Type-C is more about picking a port that can handle a 3A@5V supply than a conscious effort to support the dozens and dozens of terrible and near arbitrary USB Type-C supplies on the market (some output 12V with zero negotiation. You know- for giggles). I'd be surprised if they tested with more than a couple of staff phone chargers and their own-brand chargers. I can't imagine the idea of anyone using an expensive power-delivery enabled dock with a thick, 40cm Thunderbolt 3 cable really entered their minds.

My advice to anyone buying a Pi 4 would be "Just buy a Pi-branded power-supply. They're inexpensive and guaranteed to work." Granted you might want to save a few bucks and use your phone charger... but then what are you going to use to charge your phone?

Touché.

On one hand I think "Maybe I should diversify my infrastructure."

And on the other I think "But one of the biggest upsells was convinience."

And it's fortunate I don't have a third hand, because I'd be thinking "Oh crap oh crap I just migrated a client website to LightSail + CloudFlare saying how super awesome and robust it would be."

But it's okay now because it looks like everything is back up!

I just changed a setting in my CloudFlare account... did I break everything?

Me too! I think it’s gaining a little extra appreciation lately. For us the wow-factor was the ease of tying it together with a C host program in lieu of some conf file based alternative. For example our Keybow (Raspberry Pi-powered mechanical macro keyboard) product uses Lua to let users easily define and share macros. Not only does this trivially exceed any effort I could have made to design a domain-specific configuration file format, but it’s allowed users to try things I’d never conceived.

I’ve recently compiled a Lua-based project into WASM with Emscripten, but transpiling Lua into JS to avoid the engine overhead is compelling. I wonder how these approaches compare. For me it’s very alluring to use most of the same codebase as other deployment targets. This also has the potential to add better contextual intelligence to a web-based Lua editor- I’ll have to race it against Regex to see which is faster/better at pulling lists of locals/globals/functions out of Lua input for use in auto-complete.

Ah those were the good old days! I wish I'd spent more time actually getting code up and running on those and the Dingoo A320 but it really was way over my head at the time.

Still contemplating a Dragonbox Pyra. The OpenPandora, despite a rocky start, played host to some incredible things.

What we're doing with 32blit is effectively Pico 8 with hardware. I'd be happy if we saw a tenth of the success that Pico 8 has achieved- some of the titles written for it are truly remarkable and seeing how people push the artificial limits is genuinely interesting and something I'd be honoured to foster more of.

I think Dank Tomb's lighting is by far one of my favourite examples - https://hackernoon.com/pico-8-lighting-part-1-thin-dark-line...

Small world- I just finished watching this again today. I've been trying palette-cycling techniques with 32blit to see if I can learn the ropes and put together a half-decent tutorial. I've had these - http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ - up on my screen for the last few days. I managed to get - terrible - palette-cycled fire sprites working with smooting (which Joe calls "Blend Shift Cycling") and I think there are still some interesting interactions to be found between these classic techniques and modern hard/software.

It's really exciting to see renewed interest in these techniques and "8-bitish" games in general since it probably means we've chosen the right time to make our handheld.

I would be interested to hear from CloudFlare as to whether there is any possibility of confirming that the URL "https://pipdigz.co.uk/p3/id39dqm3c0_license_h.txt" - fetched by the "license check" code - did at some point return the text "https://kotrynabassdesign.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php". I suspect this will be difficult, or impossible, to verify (I'm not a security expert) and the "license check" code in and of itself (while extremely fishy) only betrays the potential of a DDoS and is not a smoking gun.

Or, better still, an Archive.org snapshot of the commit that added this very code: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331195338/bitbucket.org/pip...

(As a resident geek, I was asked to look into this by a friend)