This BMO Build Brings Its Own "Quasi-OS" to Emulate Games, Play Videos — And Fart

Pseudonymous maker "Confident-Dare-9425," hereafter simply "Dare," has built an Adventure Time-inspired retro games console in the style of beloved character BMO — but, unlike previous BMOs, this one has a key feature built into its Java-based pseudo-operating system: it farts.

"My daughter and I like Adventure Time, and [this is] her personal BMO that I built," Dare explains,referring to the sentient handheld games console and ambulatory robot from the animated show. "Here's what it can do: it runs games using RetroArch (at the moment: [Sega] Genesis, [Sony] PSP, and [Nintendo] NES); it runs regular desktop apps; it works with a TV in dual-display mode; it works a couple of hours on batteries; sometimes it farts (come on, it’s funny for both 6yo and me)."

The 3D-printed housing, outsourced to a local print shop and produced in PETG, was inspired by Bob Herzberg's BMOs, and inside — as is common in such builds — there's a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB single-board computer running the Raspberry Pi OS Linux distribution. It's not this that the user sees, though; instead, the gadget boots into a "quasi-OS" dubbed BMOS and written in Java, providing a friendly user interface with themed icons alongside the ability to launch any application available to the underlying operating system — including game emulation via RetroArch and video playback using Plex in the Firefox browser.

"This device is the second iteration of BMO. The first iteration was an unreliable mess. It would eventually just stop working on its own, but my cat put it out of its misery sooner," Dare notes of the experience. "Lesson 1: use proper tools. In the first iteration, I MacGyvered JST connectors with pliers and a soldering iron. I hated the process, and most connectors later failed. For the second iteration, I bought a crimper for the sake of my mental health. Making connectors turned into the most pleasant experience of the whole project.

"Lesson 2: painting is hard," Dare continues. "The first iteration was sanded, primed, painted, and coated with a finish. I messed up at every stage, to different extents. If done right, you can make your device look factory-made. If done wrong, you can turn it into a flytrap covered with fingerprints (like I did)."

More details on the project are available in Dare's Reddit post.