12 votes

Playdate hardware teardown

4 comments

  1. [3]
    Akir
    Link
    You know, after a bunch of exposure to the Arduboy and how surprisingly capable it is, it seems like the choice of an ARM Cortex-M7 chip is crazy overkill. I'm both surprised and unsurprised at...

    You know, after a bunch of exposure to the Arduboy and how surprisingly capable it is, it seems like the choice of an ARM Cortex-M7 chip is crazy overkill.

    I'm both surprised and unsurprised at how simple the crank mechanism is. Surprised because it seems people who design controls keep seeming to forget how simple and effective magnetic controls work, but unsurprising because I was considering doing something similar for a personal project because high resolution rotary encoders are dramatically more expensive than you'd think they are.

    4 votes
    1. [2]
      moocow1452
      Link Parent
      If they could have gotten the Playdate to ~70 USD without the crank by specking it similar to the Arduboy, I guess it wouldn't have been a boutique product anymore.

      If they could have gotten the Playdate to ~70 USD without the crank by specking it similar to the Arduboy, I guess it wouldn't have been a boutique product anymore.

      2 votes
      1. Akir
        Link Parent
        Now that I think about it, it looks like some of their dev tools will be built around Lua, which they may or may not be interpreting on the system itself. So maybe the extra oomf isn't just for...

        Now that I think about it, it looks like some of their dev tools will be built around Lua, which they may or may not be interpreting on the system itself. So maybe the extra oomf isn't just for fun after all.

        5 votes
  2. nothis
    Link
    The crank's input is entirely done through a magnetic field! Nintendo, watch and learn!

    One thing this crank won't do? Drift. There's no wiper or spring or sensor surface to wear out. The design is simplicity itself. You might even say there's ... no cranky-panky.

    The crank's input is entirely done through a magnetic field! Nintendo, watch and learn!

    4 votes