I like to try new things, and after seeing what has to be the smallest DIY gaming console I have ever come across, I thought I would give it a try. The original was designed by Fanis and it is a really cool little device, however the one thing it was missing was sound. I reached out to him, asked if I could get the files as I wanted to add a speaker, and he was kind enough to send them over.

The current version of pic-o-pocket runs on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W and has a I2C OLED display, a small 8Ω speaker, a LiPo battery with charging circuit, and four buttons. It runs a custom platform built in MicroPython with 13 games, several songs, WiFi that syncs with an internet time server, live weather, screensavers and a battery status monitor and various other features.

All the files to build your own, including all the code, a parts list, 3D print files and circuit diagrams are available on my Patreon page here: Avalaible here!

The awesome original by Fanis is Available here!

This started after I found an ESP32 and got a new soldering iron, and after playing around with that for a bit I moved on to the Pico. The build itself was reasonably easy and the soldering was not as difficult as I expected. Getting everything to fit into the case was a bit time consuming, however it all fit in the end.

I enjoyed the coding as I have always dabbled in it, however most of the heavy lifting was done with the help of Claude.That said, I will say that I do not like Python and will be avoiding it in future projects and sticking to C based languages.

Some of the things that took a bit of figuring out were getting the battery voltage reading accurate, adding the speaker which required a transistor circuit to drive it properly, and getting the WiFi chip on the Pico 2W to behave.

There is also an optional NTC thermistor for battery temperature monitoring. I had one available and added it mostly because I could, however it is optional and the device works fine without it.

Next up I am planning to build a wooden clock kit, which is purely mechanical with no electronic components at all. After that I am planning a small robot. Stay tuned for those.

R