OpenTama: an open source reference design for MCUGotchi !
By JC on Friday 22 April 2022, 12:04 - PCB Design - Permalink
Last year, I introduced MCUGotchi, a Tamagotchi P1 emulator for microcontrollers, that worked on an STM32F0 development board. Today, I am pleased to announce the support of a new board in MCUGotchi: OpenTama !
OpenTama is an open source development board created by Sparkr, the company I co-founded. It has been specifically designed for MCUGotchi using KiCad and has everything a virtual pet needs, and even more, in a small and nice form factor.
It features:
- a low-power STM32L072CBT MCU
- either a backlit 128x64 LCD UC1701x or a 128x64 OLED SSD1306 display
- an RGB LED for notifications
- a piezoelectric speaker
- a 1000mAh battery
- a USB C connector for data and charging
- three buttons
Being an open source hardware design, anyone can manufacture his/her own board. Furthermore, all components have been placed on the top side of the board, so that the assembly as well can be performed by EMS such as JLCPCB, even for small quantities (references for the various parts are included in the project).
Regarding the software side, MCUGotchi has been enhanced with various functionalities, mainly:
- FAT16 storage for the ROMs and saves, seen as Mass Storage Device from a computer
- Auto save
- Sound support
- RGB LED notification support
- Battery indicator
- Low battery detection
- Auto power-off if no ROM is detected
- Firmware upgrade
There is also a new user menu, triggered by a long press on the right button, allowing, for instance, to configure what can be configured, to enable/disable stuff, to play with emulation related settings, to save/restore your Tamagotchi or to load custom ROMs!
Here is a quick video showing MCUGotchi running on the OpenTama board:
That being said, OpenTama is not limited to the MCUGotchi firmware, and is also intended to be used as a development board to learn embedded programming. For instance, I would love to see an original open source virtual pet running on OpenTama!
The full KiCad project, including the schematics and the PCB layout, along with the instructions to make your own, are available on GitHub there, and are distributed under the open hardware CERN-OHL-S v2 license.
As a reminder, MCUGotchi is also available on GitHub there.
If you would like to get an OpenTama board, but do not want to make it yourself, please let us know there. Depending on the demand, we are considering a small crowd-funding campaign to produce a batch.
If you want to know more about Sparkr, fell free to check out our website https://www.sparkr.tech/en and/or contact us at contact@sparkr.tech!