[deshipu] aka [Radomir Dopieralski] has been building educational handhelds for a good part of a decade now, and knows how to design hardware that makes for effective teaching. Today, we are graced with the PewPew LCD project, latest in the PewPew student-friendly handheld series, powered by CircuitPython.
The goal for all of these devices has been consistent — making game programming accessible and fun. This time, as an entry in the Reuse, Recycle, Revamp round of Hackaday Prize, the new PewPew receives an upgrade – from an 8×8 LED matrix to an LCD display. This might not sound like much, but the change of display technology itself isn’t the main point. [deshipu] is working on ways to bring down the price and assembly complexity of PewPew handhelds, and he’s found there’s plenty of old stock RH-112 displays, previously used on cellphones like Nokia 1202, which these days go for as little as $1.30 a piece.
It’s exceptionally simple to get into writing games for the PewPew – one of the reasons why it’s a strong platform for workshops and individual learning. There’s already a slew of games and tutorials, and we can’t wait to see all the cool games people can build when given all the extra pixels! And, of course, we appreciate setting an example for giving new life to old displays – displays that’d otherwise inevitably end up in a trash container behind a warehouse in China.
The Reuse, Recycle, Revamp Hackaday Prize 2022 round is going on for two more weeks. If you’re making good use of something that would otherwise be discarded, please do share it with us, so that we can all learn and draw inspiration from your projects!
But ironically, this homage features a critical piece that’s actually not made of wood. The 77’s pickup pattern was cardioid, making for a directional mic that picked up sound best from the front, thanks to an acoustic labyrinth that increased the path length for incoming sound waves. [Frank]’s labyrinth was made from epoxy resin poured into a mold made from heavy paper, creating a cylinder with multiple parallel tunnels. The tops and bottoms of adjacent tunnels were connected together, creating an acoustic path over a meter long. The ribbon motor, as close to a duplicate of the original as possible using wood, sits atop the labyrinth block’s output underneath a wood veneer shell that does its best to imitate the classic pill-shaped windscreen of the original. The video below, which of course was narrated using the mic, shows its construction in detail.
