There doesn’t seem to be any suitable categories for the questions I’m asking so I’ll put them here. Close enough!
Basically, I’ve been thinking of buying some hardware for my games. I’ve already got a Kitronic Arcade and it’s doing just fine, but I wanna experiment with other things - mainly, either a pybadge or a pygamer.
So firstly, does anyone know any reputable non-scammy sites that still have pygamers available? Since GPUs are eating up a lot of the microcontroller market they’ve been harder to find and have been out of stock on the best sites (pi hut, adafruit, pimoroni etc).
For the reason above, I’ve been considering getting a pybadge instead. Same thing, mostly, just a tad less advanced and without a cool joystick (and a little less assembly).
(Putting a summary in so you can skip some details)
Summary
I was going to try and get one from Adafruit but their shipping prices to the UK are… not great. Around £33 or so. So I decided to get all the starter kit items from pi hut instead, which ship for cheaper. Only thing is that they don’t have Adafruit LiPo batteries (rechargeable packet things).
They have ones of the same voltage on pi hut, but I remember that on the Adafruit site saying you could use any of their batteries to power the Pybadge, leading to my question…
Will the Pybadge (and most likely, Pygamer) work with a different brand of LiPo batteries to Adafruit or will it blow up?
Just make sure it is a typical lipo battery (4.2 - 3.2v or whatever ending voltage that is sane) and the polarity of the battery is correct. It is marked on the PCB so you know if the plug is wired “backwards” or not.
One time I bought a lipo from Amazon with the backwards polarity, I was able to redo the plug so that it was the correct way around. It still works!
Don’t worry, one day you too may fall down a hardware-based rabbit hole and understand. We’re just basically talking about setting up the consoles our games run on and what other bits of tech they’re compatible with.
Heh, I was gonna ask you that on another post funnily enough, lol. Luckily for me I found some stuff on Mouser! They didn’t have the starter kit in stock and shipping is limited on LiPo batteries and the case felt a bit too expensive for my order, so I only bought the speaker, the actual Pygamer board and the button caps. I’ll buy the rest later.
My advice is to just forego the batter altogether and use a powerbank. It’s safer, easier to use, more flexible (you can attach whichever powerbank you want) and you don’t need to ship a lithium battery, so the fee is usually cheaper.
But if you insist on using a battery, 3rd party batteries should work, as long as you install them correctly.
Oh. I just ordered a battery. Never mind. What kind of power bank would you suggest if I got one in the future, and how do you do it (if you plug it in through the JST port or micro USB one, how do you get the correct voltage etc.)? I’m a bit new to the concept.
If you plug it in through the micro USB, that should be taken care of. I just plug and play with my PyGamer, and the powerbank also doesn’t really matter. The devices don’t draw a lot of power so a huge battery is not necessary
Battery: only 1-cell lipo(3.7v~4.Xv) work with microbit/arcade console. 2 or more will multiplied the output voltage, for example: 2-cell=7.4v, 3-cell=11.1v, these are unsafe for microbit. Or seperate these cells, and use one of them at a time, if you can DIY.
USB port: work with any powerbank or mobile charger as long as they output about 5v, even it has some fast charge potocal(it would not be actived).
Connect battery on usb port is not a good idea, and vice versa.
The circuit is pretty delicate, so you’ll want some kind of protection, acrylic case, 3D printed case, insurance, etc. my headphone jack came loose a while ago because I didn’t have a case.
Noted. I was going to leave the case until a bit later, trying to manage expenses, but I’ll buy the enclosure kit or see if I could get the case 3D printed (I don’t have a 3D printer myself, but I know some people who do, in case I can’t buy the acrylic one) asap as soon as it comes. Thanks.
