Dan Geiger Upcycles Unwanted SMART Response XE Handhelds into Portable Super Star Trek Consoles

Mechanical engineer and educational electronics creator Dan Geiger is in the process of upcycling unwanted old SMART Response XE handhelds into portable games consoles for the mainframe classic Super Star Trek — and will sell you a fully-functional unit for just $20.

"I love retro games and love rescuing devices destined for the trash heap," Geiger explains. "The original Super Star Trek program was written by Mike Mayfield, with a modified version published in 101 BASIC GAMES, as 'STREK7' 1/12/75 by Dave AHL. I played this on a Timex Sinclair, Commodore 64, TRS-80, and a host of other BASIC supporting platforms."

Now it's the turn of the SMART Response XE. Originally developed by SMART Technologies for classroom use, the SMART Response XE is a compact portable computer with cramped ortholinear QWERTY keyboard and a monochrome LCD display with ten fast-access buttons. The idea was that students could respond to multiple-choice quizzes, and even short essay questions, digitally — though the march of technology means many of these devices are now being scrapped from classrooms.

Thus Geiger's idea to repurpose them. Having already developed a port of BASIC for the device, the project seemed simple — except for the limitations of the display. "I was going to load a modified version of Super Star Trek when I realized the limitations of the screen size and scrolling did not really allow for the smooth operation of the game," Geiger explains. "However, I really wanted to have this, so I generated some sketches of a UI and set out to program a SMART Response friendly version. The result is an easy to use interface to make the game easy to navigate and fun to play."

To avoid issues with the partial keyboard, the reimagined portable Super Star Trek makes full use of the ten quick-response buttons either side of the display — allowing quick access to ship systems like navigation, phasers, and photon torpedoes. It's fully playable, and will be immediately recognizable to fans of the original — the biggest change being that it's playable in the palm of your hand.

Geiger has released the source code for the project on GitHub under an unspecified open source license, for anyone who already has a SMART Response XE to hand; for those who don't, he's also selling upcycled units with the game pre-loaded on the Subsystems Tindie store for just $20 each.