I’ve been picking away at this modular arduboy build for a while now, but for whatever reason yesterday I was motivated to wire in the buttons and finish it. I decided to do it this way so I could easily recover the pro micro and swap out the d-pad for a joystick.
My recliner has a USB port in it, and plugging this thing in when I prop my feet up amuses me to no end. It’s stupid, but it’s my kind of stupid.
My first Arduboy was quite noisy, with very clicky buttons. I was excited to get these Adafruit soft tactile buttons, and they are indeed silent, but I was concerned they might not be good for extended play due to the shape and I was right. The A/B buttons are okay, but continuously pressing the D-Pad bothers the pad of my thumb after a while. By the time I reached the end of the first level of Castle Boy my thumb was starting to get sore.
There aren’t a lot of silent tactile button options that aren’t surface-mount, but the Adafruit thumbstick will to be easier to use. This requires modifying the Arduboy2 library both for the screen I’m using and the thumbstick, as I won’t be able to use Mr. Blinky’s Homemade anymore. I’m not sure how this setup will coexist with Flash memory yet.
There are three to-dos: flash cart, volume control, and thumbstick. No idea when or what order, but the thumbstick is the most prudent. For the flash cart, I kind of want to try a 3.3V pro micro. It seems silly to order more boards instead of just getting a voltage regulator, but if it works it would simplify wiring and the OLED should probably be running on 3.3V anyway. I have to order them overseas otherwise I would have done it by now.