Handheld Atari 2600 Packs A CRT

October 7, 2026 by Jenny List 32 Comments

We covered [Nick Bild]’s mini Atari console using original devices not so long ago, and today he’s back with the same console wrapped up with a CRT as a handheld. It would have cost a fortune in D cells to own back in the day, but we know we’d have lusted after one of these in 1979.

He’s called it the µTari Go, pronounced “Microtari”, and it’s a 3D printed affair with the buttons roughly where you’d expect them if you’re used to the Game Boy, and a cartridge socket at the top above the screen.The PCB is the circuit of the original packed into a smaller space, so his claim of using original hardware is valid. The CRT is one of those Sony flattened modules that can still be found in the usual online bazaars, and it packs a small speaker. He’s not been foolhardy enough to equip it with those D cells, so the power is an external 12 V jack.

You can’t not like this project, especially after seeing it in action in the video below. Unlike in the ’70s a USB-C power pack could run this thing with reasonable playing time, so it could even be fully portable if you wanted. You can see our write-up of the board itself here.

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AVR Laptop Pushes The Limits Of 8-Bit

October 4, 2026 by Tyler August 40 Comments

If you saw a device that had a laptop form factor playing sound and video, alt-tabbing over to play a game or take some notes, then back to the video — well, that’s normal; that’s what laptops do. If you learned the heart of this machine was an Arduino-compatible AVR microcontroller board, you’d probably do the same spit-take we did. Well, put down your coffee, because [Vladimir]’s AVR Laptop project really is that impressive.

The micro at the heart of this amazing laptop is an ATmega2560. That’s a pretty powerful chip by 8-bit microcontroller standards, but it’s still an 8-bit microcontroller, so getting the FreeRTOS-based system and all of the functions he wants onboard took some careful coding. The ST7920 128×64 monochrome LCD isn’t being driven by any standard library, for example — [Vladimir] built his own driver that does only what he wants. Even in 1-bit color, getting 24 fps video playback was a challenge, especially with sound, and the write-up gets into how that was accomplished.

The code is pending review before release, but we do look forward to seeing how he pulled it all off. In the meantime, we can at least watch it in action in the demo video embedded below.

The vibe of making an 8-bit machine do things you don’t expect to fit in 8 bits reminds us of SymbOS for the Z80. For the sysadmins out there, we’ve also seen an AVR web server.

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Open Source Tricorder Is In It For The Science

September 30, 2026 by Tyler August 11 Comments

If you’re reading Hackaday there’s pretty good odds you’re at least somewhat fond of Star Trek. We’d bet good money most of you would quit your jobs today if a Starfleet recruiter showed up. That’s something you’d have in common with [PeterAJansen], who has been working for over a decade now to create something worthy of being called a tricorder. If his latest iteration, the Open Source Science Tricorder Cyberdeck, isn’t there yet, it’s pretty darn close.

Frankly, it looks more usable than Roddenberry’s version.

The “tri” in tricorder means three, but this device has more than three instruments– so did the ones on the show, come to think of it. You won’t be scanning for veteron radiation with this, but you do get a scintillation crystal to get a spectroscopic analysis of beta- or gamma-ray sources; there’s also a visible light spectrometer, thermal camera, and magnetic field camera along with a standard magnetometer and the usual environmental sensors to give you temperature, pressure, and humidity, plus particulate, VOC and CO2 concentration. Enough to explore an alien planet? That’s hard to say, but it seems like enough to explore this one.

The device is based around a Clockwork Pi uConsole, which takes care of the form-factor: a slabtop with a QWERTY keyboard and an IPS display in a nice screen, and a Compute Module 5 to crunch all that data. It might not be quite as stylish as the folding units seen on-screen in Star Trek, but it seems like an eminently practical form factor. There are videos of it in operation as well as being assembled on the GitHub repository, where you can get all the details needed to make your own. It is the Open Source Science Tricorder, after all.

This isn’t the first project we’ve seen chasing tricorder glory, but many of the others were more interested in screen accuracy than science. [Peter]’s earlier “arducorder” was a very notable exception to that trend.

Thanks to [MarcCote] for the tip! If your scanners pick up something interesting in cyberspace, remember our hailing frequencies are always open.

This PICO-8 Handheld Is No Fantasy

September 28, 2026 by Tyler August 7 Comments

The PICO-8 is what is known as a ‘fantasy console’– you can program it, and there are oodles of games, but it’s not actually the 8-bit console it pretends to be. It’s a virtual machine, one that can run on top of any modern OS. When [UncleStem] got into PICO-8, he decided that he liked the PICO-8’s portability, he wanted a different kind of portability– so he took the ‘fantasy’ out of ‘fantasy console’ with his GameBoy-esqe handheld build, the build/dev video of which is embedded below.

At its core, it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero2W. That’s rather overkill for an 8-bit virtual machine, but it’s what he had on hand, and it makes for an easy build. The real hero of the build is the 720 by 720 pixel IPS display that matches the PICO-8’s square aspect ratio and takes up most of the real estate on the handheld. Even better, it has HDMI in and sound support, so with some buttons and a battery the hardware is all there after [UncleStem] designs a handsome 3D printed case, and also has a go milling it out of aluminum before giving up and having a pro do it.

Since it’s so easy to do these days, everything lives on a custom PCB from his sponsor that gives the handheld good mechanical stability. He’s also using the full-colour silkscreen option to make a very pretty PCB. If that part of the project appeals, we’ve covered guides to PCB art before. He’s shared the PCB and everything else he can on a google drive, though note that the fantasy console itself is not open source, and would need purchased to finish the project.

Oddly enough, this is not the first handheld we’ve seen based on the PICO-8. That would be this project that uses a single-button camcorder form-factor. As unique as that is, this project has the benefit of working with the whole library of PICO-8 games.

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A Hotspot Becomes A Handheld

September 19, 2026 by Jenny List 7 Comments

A Linux handheld computer is, in theory, easy and inexpensive given the availability of single-board computers, but in practice the budget invariably edges well into three figures. There’s an interesting alternative from [bkovac] that won’t break the bank as much, using a cheap 4G wireless hotspot, an iPhone USB keyboard case accessory, and, though a cheaper display could suffice, a fancy Adafruit Sharp memory display.

The hotspot is available from AliExpress for around 20 dollars/Euros/pounds, and it’s referred to by its model number, MF800. It’s powered by a Qualcomm MSM8916, also known as the Snapdragon 410, which you might have found in a budget cellphone early in the last decade. Importantly, though, it’s supported by mainstream Linux, and while it’s by no means the fastest on the block, it can be a poor man’s alternative to a Raspberry Pi. It comes with a small SPI display, but this project replaces it with a much bigger Sharp SPI memory display.

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This Circuit Sculpture Is An ESP32-Powered Console

September 11, 2026 by Tyler August 10 Comments

Expressif might not have intended the ESP32-S3 to become an emulation powerhouse, but that’s certainly what has happened. The little microcontroller seems perfect for recreating the Game Boys or Game Gears of years past, and there are a lot of software options to that end. Having grabbed firmware off a github repo, you still need a physical build to hold, and that’s where this one by [HVT Lab and Huy Vector] stands out.

As you can see, they’re letting everything hang out — not even in a 90s-inspired clear case, but with an open frame of soldered brass, with just a small strip of 2 mm clear acrylic to help stabilize the buttons. That appears to be held with cyanoacrylate glue, but it’s brass and solder doing the majority of the structural work here. We might be a little more confident tossing this lovely device in a bag or pocket if the whole device was boxed in with that acrylic — shorting the exposed power bus on your keys sounds like a bummer — but we can’t argue with the aesthetic vision here. It’s a lovely build on the physical end.

From the video it looks like the software is based on Retro-Go, which we’ve seen in use before. In any case, there are plenty of open source projects you could load onto the ESP32-S3 powering this circuit sculpture, though, from NES to IBM PC.

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Eenk Provides EInk, ESP32 Powered Text Adventures

August 27, 2026 by Tyler August 19 Comments

There’s a niche genre of text adventure that’s halfway between a traditional novel and a videogame. Think Zork if it had an extra few novels worth of words of well-crafted story to go with the action. [t0mg] is a fan of such adventures, and also quite enjoys carrying around his palm-sized ESP32 powered Xteink e-ink reader, so decided to create a project to merge the two interests, called eeink.

The Xteink readers have gotten popular lately because their modest internals and size make them very affordable. Not to mention hackable, since they’re basically an ESP32-C3 e-ink dev board that comes with a nice case and battery. The X4 Pro notably comes with an ESP32-S3 which means a lot more RAM, but this project targets both that and the X3/X4 that use the C3 version. Using the C3 means working within some rather stringent limits, as Xteink didn’t spring for any PSRAM, so [t0mg] had less memory to work with than folks did in the 80s.

This project is specifically focused on adventures using the scripting language ink, and comes with its own IDE called eenky to roll your own choose your own adventure book. It’s all on GitHub under an MIT license, and if you want to see it in action there’s a demo video embedded below.

Speaking of Zork, it wasn’t just the first commercial text adventure; it brought some important technological innovations, too.

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