�But, kitty!� You cry out, �we live in the land of small portable computers that can connect to the internet and if I really wanted I could play with my Ryu from my phone!�
To that I say, hush, and look at this other small computer that can connect to the internet:
Anyway, buckle up for a post that�s three parts rambling story and one part (shitty) tutorial/build process.
Some of you may recall that I learned a bit about using a Raspberry Pi for my Potato Camera during the art challenge. I�m happy to report that I remembered almost none of that process and relied heavily on tutorial after tutorial and discussion thread after discussion thread. Due to that, I�m going to skip over the initial setup of installing raspbian and sshing, it�s pretty much the same story as the Potato Camera with a whole lot of �right, shit, now I remember�.
At one point I broke something and I�m still not quite sure how:
PS thank you Fab for being my sounding board through all this!
The next step was getting things to actually react with the buttons. I had a couple false starts, but eventually had a working interaction!
[ID: Clip of a button on a breadboard being pressed and terminal output displaying "Button was pushed!"
At this point going from �button is pushed� to interact with my Ryu script was something I was wildly overthinking. I knew fine and dandy how to get Python to interact with GPIO but javascript was a whole different ball game. It only works with node, which I had never used before and was struggling to get to install properly on my pi and even then I wasn�t sure how to then make it work with a tampermonkey script. Most tutorials assumed you had full control over the stack and �i want to push buttons on a website� isn�t really an end use most people need or want. I was questioning this when I realized I was a big fucking dumbass and all I needed to do was map the GPIO keys to the same keyboard keys I had been using to control the Ryu buttons all along. I followed a couple of tutorials and successfully made myself a nice little 3-key-keyboard.
Next step was to get tampermonkey on the pi, copy my userscript over and I was ready to go! Only hiccup was that at the time, my options were limited to using an HDMI cable to connect to a big screen or using VNC to look at the desktop from my laptop. Not exactly the cute and mini portable options I�d been hoping for. I had bought two screens but one used up all the GPIO pins and the other required soldering, so I was a bit stuck. The latter wasn�t a total game over because at this point, I had all this buttons and resistors I planned on soldering together, but I also realized that thus far in my electronics career I�d either done solderless work or work with premade PCBs. I wasn�t ready to start designing my own, but I started looking into the costs of a soldering setup and a solderable breadboard, wasn�t really sure if I wanted to make the investment.
I started thinking of other options. I knew a lot of people used the Pi Zero as a mini game console for various emulators, so I looked into what screens they used. I found a very affordable one.
The Waveshare 1.44 inch LCD HAT with three buttons and a joystick. The three buttons is what sold me. That was the exact number of buttons I needed for the Ryu project, it fit perfectly over the Pi Zero, no soldering was required, and I started dreaming of joystick possibilities.
I followed their tutorial several times to no avail. I followed other people�s tutorial to no avail. I spoke with somebody also struggling. I spoke with somebody who wrote one of the tutorials. Then I read an amazon review:
And in pain I was. I followed several tutorials, even corresponded with the author of one, and had no luck. I decided to try a different approach and find an image preloaded to work with the screen. The first one was a bust, but the second one worked magic.
At this point you need to know that I had this plan to use an old Polly Pocket clamshell as a case for this thing. Bring in some more 90s nostalgia and make use of them finally. I had already been fidgeting with a Polly Pocket Car for a couple of days, I even took a couple pictures for scale, so it was a fitting surprise that the new OS had an open road as the default BG. I was ready to begin my journey!
Now to navigate to clraik again and be threatened by the Anime Girl With A Gun, this time in miniature format. I tried to find my most threatening Polly Pocket to fend her off, but turns out she was already out. Magic wand defeats a gun any day.
[ID: The Pi Screen displaying my clraik profile page, but because I am not logged in the �Register Or Die� Anime Girl is pointing her gun at me. The screen is propped up in a pink Polly Pocket clamshell. Grass and some sort of stone path is visible. There is a yellow bench. Our friend the Faerie Polly Pocket is facing her off, holding her wand up in our defence.]
And here is where I ran into another headache. The version of Raspbian was too old to update chromium, which in turn was too old to install tampermonkey. My script worked fine if I entered it all manually, but doing that every time wasn�t going to work. It was a couple days of headaches of updating the right things while still being compatible with the screen (the latest distro of Raspbian is not), but there�s not really an interesting story to that and frankly it�s a lot of stuff that I�m not entirely sure why/how they worked, so not much for me to explain, either. Eventually, shit clicked.
The proportions were off, the bar was cut off, and there was extra strugg in the way but it was happening. Did a bit more twiddling and was able to display the Ryu and hearts/tools separately.
Only thing left was some sort of enclosure. I couldn't` find any for sale that fit the screen, but I did find a design on thingverse. Now a few years ago I was gifted a barely used but several-years-old 3D printer. I was living out of state at the time and it didn�t fit in my apartment, so I never moved it from my parents� house or played around with it much except a couple of the built-in example prints and one thing I did during a school break for part of a class assignment. For the most part, this thing lived in a box in the basement at my parents' house, which I have access to in my quaran-zone, so I had what was basically a new toy. There was a bit of a learning curve and some tweaks I needed to make to the design. Even had a failed attempt at engraving the ck logo, but in the end I got a mostly-functional case.
And it's at this point I got really distracted trying to get the finishing touches and also stopped documenting as much. A few more trials and tribulations with printing, but things were mostly falling into place. I have a few more dreams and goals, but for now I'm pretty settled. I've rambled way too long here and nobody is going to read every word of this so I'm gonna add one more spoiler for a bunch of pics that didn't make it into the story.
Thank you to Fab for listening to me ramble about all my mishaps and to Bat for being the catalyst to this nonsense.
Here is a list of almost every guide/blog/tutorial I reference through this. Some were not ultimately helpful or went unused, and I probably missed some, but credit where credit is due.
I've yelled about this already to you but the inventiveness and creativity here just makes my jaw drop! You took this and ran with it. And made a custom case?!? And so well-documented. Omg. Fhhfkdkslfn. Yes. Yes. Good. I like this content.
EDIT: Could I get the ryu on the tree background as an 1hr repeatable loop to play on my TV? Kind of like the Christmas Fireplace show on Netflix?
The case is mostly the design I found on thingverse, but I tweaked a couple things, which, as a mostly newbie at this, felt like a big accomplishment.
But seriously thank you so much. I have a habit of running wild with a project idea when given the time and space, which I definitely had in this circumstance, and I've been so excited to share here. ;-;
ok when you first dropped this wizard idea of making an actual tamagotchi out of the ryugotchi I thought it's BRILLIANT superb astounding
but I did not for a second think it would actually materialize into an actual, tangible, physical thing?? with such satisfying clicking and live feeding and poop scooping your actual fucking Ryu????
this is such an accomplishment, like you kept running into random problems big and small which would've made lesser mortals give up BUT YOU DID NOT!
you're brilliant, thank you for letting me bask in your glow im smarter for it
anyway let us know when you mass produce a cK themed version cos I need to add this to my keychain plz I'm begging u
Last edited by Fabulous; 12-17-2020 at 10:06 PM.
you know when someone asks "why are you so dressed up"
and you have to literally explain to them that this is who you are
@xilo
I mapped it directly to the userbar buttons, but I must confess, it took me way too long when the Ryu first came it to realize that the left/right ones were for selecting and only the center one was an action.
@(you need an account to see links)
Thank you. I'm gonna cry. ;-;
Honestly would probably be not too much for somebody to take this and make their own version. Really the only thing unique to me is that it goes to my profile in particular.
Holy shit this is so fucking cool and impressive to the nth degree! I applaud your determination and gadgetry wizardry! And your documentation skills, because man documenting your process of doing anything sucks. The finished product (for now) is adorable and makes my heart all warm and fuzzy to look at.