Are you an avid gamer? Do you enjoy playing video games on the go? Well, what if I told you that instead of buying a portable console from a well-established company, you can make one yourself? With a little patience and hard work, you can put together your very own primitive gaming machine. All you need is some basic knowledge of programming, soldering, and of course, chatGPT.
I started this project with the intention of learning about embedded systems and microcontrollers. Instead of sifting through tons of documentation and forgetting most of it, I decided to dive right into building an actual artifact and picking up things as I go. I was also curious about how chatGPT could help in the context of learning a new technology and whether it could serve as a viable alternative to searching for problem solutions and syntax tips on Google.
The microcontroller I used for this project is the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny yet powerful board that’s perfect for simple electronics projects, learning programming, and building various smart devices. Along with the Pico, I needed a few basic parts like a simple double-sided PCB board, header pins, buttons, a compact OLED screen, and jumper wires.
Now comes the fun part - assembling the fully functioning portable gaming console. To make it do anything, we need to write some software for it. But instead of traditional programming, we can use chatGPT, a cutting-edge General AI model, to generate code for our video game ideas. By prompting chatGPT with a description of what we want to generate, we can iterate and add missing features to the output code.
While chatGPT is not a replacement for software engineering, it is a powerful tool that developers can utilize in their daily tasks. Building this console was a relatively fast process, even for a soldering beginner like myself. With the help of chatGPT, I was able to build three classic video game clones in a single evening. The code for these games can be found on my GitHub page.
It’s worth mentioning that the parts used for this build are relatively inexpensive and can be repurposed for many other projects in the future. If you’re interested, you can find the complete list of parts in the description below. Feel free to leave a comment suggesting other projects you’d like to see me attempt in a future video. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Good luck and take care!
