Arduino Game Boy Printer Emulator

Brian Khuu (mofosyne) created an Arduino powered Game Boy Printer emulator; after picking up a couple of Game Boy Camera’s and finding a bunch of images on them he attempted to dump the images, and succeeded! Being a massive fan of both the Game boy and photography this project was for me. A while back I picked up a handful of super cheap (good quality but inexpensive with the CH340G chip) Arduino’s. It was hard trying to find projects that I really really wanted to do.

Luckily while browsing Hackaday I seen this article about the project. I quickly went to the good ol’ eBay to pick up a GBC Link Cable (from hellfire_trading) and had a rummage through my Arduino box. Decided on the Micro, it seemed perfect for the job. I had a Raspberry Pi GPIO breakout board which fit the Arduino Micro quite well.

Gameboy Original/Color Link Cable Pinout
 __________
|  6  4  2 |
 \_5__3__1_/ (at cable)
 
Arduino Pin      Gameboy Link Pin
unused           Pin 1 : 5.0V
D4               Pin 2 : Serial OUTPUT
D3               Pin 3 : Serial INPUT
unused           Pin 4 : Serial Data
D2               Pin 5 : Serial Clock (Interrupt)
GND              Pin 6 : GND (Attach to GND Pin)

Once you’ve got it all soldered you can upload your code to your Arduino. Plug it into your Game Boy, open up your Arduino’s IDE Serial Monitor (Ctr+Shift+M) and set the baud rate to 115200. Go to your image on your GB Camera and press Print. You’ll see a bunch of code coming through the monitor. Copy all of the code and open the gameboy_printer_js_decoder.html and paste in the code and press Click to Update Gameboy Tile.

Here’s an instructional video of the process.

A post shared by West McGowan (@imwestm) on

If you’re getting any errors feel free to contact either myself or Brian. We’d both love to see your pictures too!

Extra

EUR Game Boy Camera Frames

Pictures Taken By Me

Cheap Arduino Serial Driver

If you’re struggling to get a cheap Arduino clone to upload code using your IDE; the chances are that it’s not connecting via the COM port correctly. This maybe caused because your board uses a CH340G serial to usb chip, which Windows doesn’t recognise. Download the driver below or from the manufacturers website (in Chinese). Failing that, you could have bought a board without a bootloader. I’ll write a tutorial as soon as I get a board without one pre-installed.

Download “CH340G / CH341G Serial Driver - CH341SER.exe” CH341SER.EXE – Downloaded 917 times – 237.62 KB Download “CH340 Datasheet” CH341DS1.pdf – Downloaded 825 times – 144.43 KB

BBC micro:bit Harry Potter Sorting Hat

We’re going to be recreating the sorting hat from Harry Potter using Microsoft Block Editor. Go ahead and create a new project. First decide which Input function you’d like to use to display the Hogwarts Houses. I’ve used the A Button, but this will work with whatever Input method you like.

Create the following:

Input → on button “A” pressed do
Variables → set “item” to
Maths → pick random 0 to “4”
Logic → if do 
Logic → “0” = “0”
Variables → “item”
Basic → show string “Hello!”

WMp4D

Click “Item” in Set “Item” and select New variable and name it RandomNumber. This variable will allow you to assign each of the Hogwarts Houses a number, along with pick random  0 to “4”, it’ll cycle through the various Hogwarts Houses you assign later.

WMeFS

We’re going to have to change the “4” to 3 because we have four Hogwarts Houses. Sounds a little silly, why 3?! Well 0 counts too!

Ravenclaw 0
Hufflepuff 1
Gryffindor 2
Slytherin 3

WM6Nt

If you press the Gear icon on if do it’ll have a little popup. In this popup you can add more to the if do without creating entire new sections. Drag the else if into the if, do this three times. Click the Gear to remove the popup once you are finished.

WMRgS

You’ll need to either duplicate (saves lots of time!) or recreate the RandomNumber = “0” and add them to else if. Change each of the numbers on the end going from 0 to 3. Same with the show string “Ravenclaw”.

WMUfb

You can compile and upload it your BBC micro:bit and find out which house you’re in!

Download “Harry Potter: The-Sorting-Hat BBC micro:bit hex” Harry-Potter-The-Sorting-Hat.hex – Downloaded 721 times – 567.30 KB