In the context of: Pimoroni is a UK based company that specializes in Raspberry Pi (RP) products. It mainly creates and sells (or resells) components for building RP gadgets, such as the Pimoroni Unicorn – 8×8 RGB LED HAT KIT. However, I did delve into gaming electronics occasionally, such as the Picade Arcade cabinet, the “32blit” handheld game console, and the small handheld PicoSystem.
Pimoroni’s latest gaming innovation is a “stick-like controller” that plugs into any HDMI-compatible TV or monitor. Last week, the company revealed the project codenamed DV Stick on Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast (below). Although there isn’t a working prototype—it’s currently on a breadboard—Pemoroni says it should be available in a few weeks.
The system includes two RP2040 (Pico) chips, each with an undisclosed amount of PSRAM. One works as a CPU, and the other as “on screen”. According to Pimoroni founder John Williamson, the design allows the chips to display graphics more efficiently.
“Each slice has a PSRAM slice for the frame buffer, and it’s swapped in VSync,” Williamson said. So we have an analog mux that basically switches chips between the two, so the application handler writes to the frame buffer in one ram chip, and then when VSync appears in the screen, it hands that ram slice to the screen processor, which returns the ram slice its junk to the application handler so that the screen is displayed on the screen.”
Williamson did not mention the original decision of the system. tom devices Supposedly It will be 1080p, though previous Pimoroni games had much lower renderings. the Pico system It was 240 x 240 on a 1.54 inch SPI IPS LCD screen. the 32 blt Athlete 3.5-inch screen with a native resolution of 320 x 240. Finally, the Baked It comes with 1024 x 768 graphics on an 8 or 10 inch IPS screen. DV Stick is compatible with all PicoSystems. However, running 240 x 240 games at 1080p will most likely look like gibberish.
In addition to the HDMI port, the DV Stick also features USB and Bluetooth connectivity for a console or keyboard. Like other game systems, it is based on home-made titles developed by the Raspberry Pi community. So Pemoroni designed the DV Stick as a development tool. Users can boot directly into the MicroPython REPL command line for game development in C++, MicroPython, or CircuitPython.
Pemoroni noted that a DV Stick—short for “digital video stick”—can be used for applications other than gaming, such as information kiosks or displaying various types of media. Williamson said he wanted to throw it out there and see what society does with it.
“It’s a little weird, but we like the concept so much that we didn’t concern ourselves too much with what was useful,” Williams said. “We just threw everything that looked interesting at him and thought we’d see what happens.”
Pimoroni is not intended to compete with major console games. You’d only expect RP enthusiasts to buy a DV Stick for small projects shared in the community or home learning and encoding. The company doesn’t have a share price, but it would be reasonable to suspect that it will go for a lower price than other gaming systems, considering that users will be saving the consoles and displays.
