ESPboy Is a $12 Open Source and Hacker-Friendly Retro Game Console

The Espressif ESP8266 was originally developed for low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices, but has come to be one of the most popular microcontrollers on the market. That’s thanks to its affordability, power, features, and versatility. If you’ve been using Arduino development boards, then you can use an ESP8266 development board for most of the same purposes—with the added benefit of onboard WiFi. RomanS took advantage of that affordability and power to design ESPboy, which is a $12 open source and hacker-friendly retro game console.

The basis of ESPboy is a WeMos D1 Mini ESP8266 development board, but any ESP266 board with a matching pinout will work. That plugs into a custom PCB that has a few buttons, a WS2812B individually-addressable RGB LED, a battery, and connections for additional modules. If all you want to do is play video games, you can add either an OLED or LCD display module. Both of those modules, along with all of the other available modules, are designed to plug right into the ESPboy—though you will need to update the firmware to handle most of the modules.

Gaming is just the start of the ESPboy’s potential, and you can use a variety of modules for all kinds of interesting builds. Other modules that have already been designed includes a GSM phone module, MP3 player module, GPS navigation module, FM radio module, Meteo weather station module, and a keyboard module. Many more designs are planned for the future, including a LoRa messenger, health monitor, camera, thermal vision client, and more. Because ESPboy is open source, you can hack it as much as you like and also take advantage of the development done by the rest of the community. All of the components needed for the basic ESPboy are very inexpensive, so you should be able to build one yourself for less than $12.