otherwise a bright and
clear, if low-resolution, panel.
For existing Arduboy owners, the Arduboy
FX may not be worth the cost of upgrading,
which is why there’s an alternative: the FX Mod
Chip. Designed for installation in an original
Arduboy, the FX Mod Chip adds the external
flash and bootloader capabilities, although it
requires a little bit of fine-pitch soldering. Oddly,
the chip costs more if you want the 200 open-
source games pre-loaded. Currently available
exclusively from the USA, the chip costs $9 US
bare or $15 US with the games (around £6.40
and £10.60 ex VAT respectively).
The Arduboy FX is available to buy from
pimoroni.com for £48 inc VAT now, while
the FX Mod Chip is exclusively available from
arduboy.com and may attract import charges
when entering the UK.The microcontroller hasn’t changed, with the same
ATmega328 powering the FXSurprisingly for such a compact design, the Arduboy
FX is easy to open, with just four screwsA physical power switch helps to prevent the
battery draining in your pocketTo prove it, the Arduboy FX comes pre-
loaded with around 200 games and tools
selected from the development community.
A new loader, the first software to boot
after you’ve gone through the out-of-the-
box tutorial, lets you select from a range of
categories – Action, Adventure, Arcade, Runner,
Platform, Strategy, Puzzle, Skill, Tabletop,
Racing, RPG, Shooter and Sports, plus sections
for Music, Apps and Tools – you then pick the
game you’d like to play.
From there, the new loader borrows a trick
from the Gamebuino – the game chosen isSystem76 enters
keyboard marketLinux-powered laptop and workstation
specialist System76 is branching out into
peripherals, launching an open-source
mechanical keyboard dubbed the Launch.
Based on the popular QMK firmware, the
keyboard includes a compact tenkeyless
84-key design, with a split spacebar and
the choice of Kailh Box Jade or Box Royal
switches. The whole design is open, down
to the plastic or aluminium chassis, but
can also be purchased as a commercial
product. The Launch is available from
system76.com now, starting at $285
US (around £202 ex VAT), including the
keyboard, spare key caps, a cap-puller and
a magnetic tilt bar.NEWS I N BRIEF
loaded into memory
and booted, replacing the
bootloader until the console
is switched off. The process is quick – the
Arduboy enters the loader instantaneously
on power-up, transfers the chosen game in
under four seconds, then loads it with only a
brief pause to flash the RGB LED and display
an animated Arduboy logo.
It’s a major improvement over the clunky
game-switching approach of the original
Arduboy, but appears to have been released
before it was quite ready. At the time of writing,
there’s no easy way to load your own games
onto the external flash memory beyond a
community-provided set of Python scripts –
a graphical user interface is in the works, but
not yet publicly available.
That doesn’t mean you can’t still develop
your own games for the Arduboy FX though.
Flashed through the Arduino IDE or avrdude,
the Arduboy FX acts like an original Arduboy
and accepts a single game that immediately
boots. Turn the Arduboy FX off and back on, and
it will bring up the loader, allowing you to select
any of the 200 built-in games as before. Tap a
fire button without selecting a new game and it
will load your own title – but beware, as flashing
any of the built-in games will erase your own
and require a connection to your PC to re-flash.
The biggest disappointment of the Arduboy
FX, meanwhile, is the display. It’s the same
model as the original Arduboy, and suffers
from the same banding issue. While not visible
on sparsely populated screens, as soon as a
game starts using bright horizontal lines, you’ll
see the banding clearly, detracting from what’sAs with the original Arduboy, power and data
connect over a micro-USB port