Evil Mad Scientist Labs introduces the Mignonette AVR gaming platform, developed by Rolf van Widenfelt, Mitch Altman, and EMS’ own Windell Oskay –
The Mignonette is designed to be easy to assemble, and uses a rather minimal set of components– the AVR microcontroller, the LED display, and a pair of ULN2003A transistor driver chips for the LEDs. Besides these core components there are also four gameplay buttons, a 6-pin ISP connector for using your AVR programmer, a 2xAA battery holder, and a simple speaker. The schematic and bill of materials are available at the Mignonette project download page.
Seems to be the most straight-forward gaming handheld yet, definitely a great way to dig into AVR coding. I’ve built one of the kits myself – the default program reminded me how challenging and fun simple gameply can be. Chris Brookfield already wrote a side-scroller title for the system, available for download @ the project’s site.
As Windell explains, The low part count makes the Mignonette an easy project to build – even without a kit/PCB. From there, one could add/swap parts and tailor it to their own liking. I could imagine vibration/rumble feature wouldn’t be hard to implement.
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