Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Kids today got it good! – Arduboy Mini”.
This is going to be somewhat arduous. For you see this video isn’t quite about the arjaboy FX here it kind of is, and what we have here is a little credit card sized. What would you call it almost like a Game Boy that we actually looked at the earlier version of this on LTT pandytech under 100, and the problem with that one was that it could only hold one game. This adds a little chip here, which is 16 megabytes of Flash to allow for up to 200 plus games. I mean obviously depending on the complexity of the games. Okay, so we’ve got instructions yup and we can download stuff directly to it using our computer, but we don’t need a computer. Unlike the old one. The old one required you to have a computer to load new games onto it, whereas this is a lot more user friendly. The idea for this actually came from a mod that got really popular they’re, actually selling that mod, for, I think twenty dollars on the Archer boy store, but for now we’re looking at the whole unit. It’S got this nice little magnetic USB uh micro to well. It’S not even a full-sized, a it’s like just the plastic part of the a which is something I’ve seen before, but is fairly uncommon. This means you can actually plug it in upside down, but it won’t hurt anything because there’s no pins on that side. As for this, it’s a nice solid piece of Kit.
Now our review or Mini review, capsule review kind of thing on LTT said that the buttons were subjectively awesome and they misquoted us on the website. As saying it’s objectively awesome, they feel pretty good they’re, not the snappy, like micro switch buttons that some things this size have. They actually feel, like you know, game controller buttons, which is actually objectively pretty good subjectively.
I feel like I could play with this, but one thing to note is that the d-pad here is four distinct buttons with no rocker, so you can actually match the whole thing all at once could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how the Game uses those buttons this screen here, that is an OLED. It’S got a high resolution in terms of DPI, I think, but it’s not a huge number of D’s. You know not that many dots power’s on instantly now this is going to be difficult to film, because it’s tiny and reflective there you go. This is like this, this little semi 3D thing and in this case we’re just trying to get higher and higher. You know it’s a Playstation One game that was similar to this in concept at least sort of back when the 3D era of video games was just kind of new um and yeah.
You just fall forever when you fail this as cool as it is, and it has a beeper, I’m not sure if you can hear it, I don’t know where the volume control is. If there is one. The only thing that I don’t like about this is that it’s got a micro b slot for power. Thankfully they fixed that in these little ESD, safe baggies, the Arduino Mini.
I don’t know how you would even begin to use this well, one thing that you’ll notice right away aside from it being absolutely tiny. Is that there’s no battery, so I can’t turn this on. Even if I wanted to. I am told by the developer that the speaker will actually be populated on the final product and there will be pins like a header for the battery instead of just these contact points. Oh these buttons. Oh, these buttons don’t feel good, though the buttons themselves feel like these buttons.
Here they have the same kind of feel to them they go down. They, they don’t quite feel like a membrane, but they they also don’t quite feel like a clicky switch. The thing is, these are the like buttons that are underneath these plastic pieces that are the buttons here so you’re just directly pushing on on those buttons. That being said, I mean, if you broke one, it’s just a matter of desoldering it and putting another one on and that’s the beauty of the ardu boy, and I mean there’s even an arguably Nano out there uh they don’t sell it anymore. I think they actually had it for a little while in the store, but it was a community project to shrink this thing down, and it’s even smaller than this, if you can believe that there’s a little peel on the screen here, this is just the bare screen.
Unlike this, where there’s like an acrylic kind of Overcoat over over shell to protect the whole thing, which I mean I could throw this in my wallet. If I wanted to it’s actually credit card sized, this is very bare. In fact, you’d probably want to bring a battery Bank now, unlike the ardu boy FX, this is Type C also it doesn’t have a power switch because it’ll just power on the instant you plug it in.
There is a reset button on the back. Here, though, there’s a there’s a very recessed button in here, you had to reach a pin in to push it, whereas this guy is just kind of hanging out right there. Now, of course, I have two of these one is white, the other is black graffiti. So you can get this in a range of colors white and black.
Obviously, there’s also, I think, like red, yellow, green, maybe blue, and they all have the option I think of getting graffiti, so they’re just yeah. So, basically, just the rgboy community developers just graffiti tags of those guys, which is awesome really, which one should I power on what we think about that I’ll. Tell you about our sponsor thanks to bestie Footwear, for sponsoring this video meet your new everyday shoes. Vessi Footwear claims that their Diamond text technology makes their shoes 100 waterproof and keep your feet cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and as far as we can tell that’s true, their new storm burst shoes combine the comfort of a sneaker with the grip And coverage of an outdoor boot, vessey’s added additional layering for additional warmth, as well as extra grip to prevent you from slipping and sliding in unfavorable weather conditions. Like we experienced not too long ago, the storm bursts are feature packed and they’ll make great gifts with the unpredictable Spring weather. That’S coming up and use code short circuit to get 15 off your order.
Shall we power it on? I’M told there’s something special here we go [ Laughter, ], that’s perfect and yeah. We have the same menu as before: tabletop racing RPGs, yeah, there’s RPGs that are like kind of like full RPGs, uh Gamepad. Oh right, you can plug this into a PC and pass the GamePad through to your PC, because it’s just a microcontroller. It can do whatever you want, whereas the previous version, the FX, had over 200 games. This has over 300, although I’m not sure if all 300 are loaded on through this pre-release version. Multiple screen – savers – oh our draw for this thing, is so low that the battery Bank shut off. Oh, the battery bank’s actually kind of low too, but like it, it’s not in danger mode. It just shut off because it thinks there’s no load on this thing, I’m going to need a plug-in adapter for you, sir. Thank you all right. Let’S go ahead and play some games um catacombs of the Damned now I saw this briefly on the kickstarter, and this is actually a fully 3D game. Okay, so that’s that’s attack and holding that stripes. Okay.
Oh, it’s really difficult to see much going on here. Also, there’s like yeah. This is like a almost like a full 3d engine which is kind of weird because, like when I turn the whole thing kind of tilts and, of course, just like with the play date. This thing doesn’t have multiple different shades of black and white, it’s literally just black and white. So that’s part of how I can manage all of that, but it’s still really impressive and you can learn to do it for yourself like this was actually coded by not somebody who’s like making the arguably but a Community member, and if we want to go back. There’S a reset button on the back here that I just hit that I think, if you hit, I guess a or whatever this bottom right button is supposed to be uh enter or select.
It’Ll just bring you to the last game you played, which in this case is kind of comes to the Damned. The bullets are way too small for me to see reliably in like at this angle and from this far away from my face. It’S like, I said surprisingly good in terms of like resolution and in terms of brightness as well. Well, okay, it’s not super Studio.
Lighty in here we’ve got a light over there, and I can see this just fine when I get the angle right so that there’s no Reflections, the mini is more like a tool, slash less hectic, gameplay experience kind of thing, and I guess that leads us to Why right like this is already super small like I could probably literally like I’ve, got a Ridge wallet and I could probably fit it in there yeah there. These are significantly less expensive. This is like this has got a stamped aluminum back. It’S got an acrylic front.
It’S got the buttons it’s significantly more correct in terms of like it’s, a complete uh console experience, sort of, whereas this is the Bare Bones. This is meant to be hackable and it’s meant to be a really low-cost way to get into this like. This is not expensive, it’s like 60 bucks, but this is like 30 bucks. If I had access to this, when I was in like Junior High uh, even maybe elementary school, then it could have changed the course of my life.
Quite significantly, I could have been uh like a coder like somebody who creates programs that other people use, and I admire that Fleet dedication to just making things out of thin air a lot, and this is doing both the hardware and the software. You can actually build this yourself if you want to or something like it. There are classes out there that do put these together on breadboards, like solderless breadboards and it just gets, gets, gets more involved and that’s something that you don’t really get so much with a completed product like this you’ve got. You know it’s fully contained and yeah.
It looks kind of hacky and cool because it’s got the you can see all the components, and you know you can build one of these yourself too, but it’s not quite the same experience as this. It’S obviously not going to be for everyone like, like I said I probably wouldn’t carry this around with me. I I would probably destroy it instantly, whereas this is more, I guess my speed. This is something that is open source that plays open source software, and you know I can hack, I can go into the the games and adjust parameters, change the jump Heights of characters or you know, make it different from how it like normally is. I’M kind of into hacking would I buy it. I mean, maybe not me, it is really really amusing.
How small it is it’s smaller than the tag the banana comes with smaller in in every Dimension. Well: okay, not every Dimension, it’s not thinner, but it’s not that thick! So yeah, it’s probably not for me, but like it’s super awesome, I love it. So should you want to buy one if you get in line now, then you should get yours in June or you should at least be able to buy one in June. I mean I personally hope that you do think that this is worth buying because stuff like this just really makes me happy.
You know. Maybe it makes you happy too, like we didn’t really go into Super detail in the arju boy back in that Tech under 100 episode – and I don’t feel like – I went into sufficient detail in this to kind of really sell it in terms of what it’s supposed To be, for you know, it’s more of a surface level thing, and if you want to see more of this, just let us know down in the comments below like seriously it’s it’s definitely something that I want to look into more for now, though, thanks for watching Make sure you get subscribed, so you don’t miss other videos like this one. Should we do more in the future or, unlike it, there’s plenty of stuff here. .