Nearly all client digital gadgets in the marketplace conceal their PCBs away within plastic or aluminum enclosures. That is sensible should you nonetheless consider PCBs as these ugly inexperienced slabs coated in pointy protrusions. However PCBs are fairly robust and, with a little bit of creativity, might be made to appear and feel very good. It’s even potential to remove enclosures completely and depend on the PCB(s) to supply construction. That’s precisely what Grant Sinclair did to make the GamerCard and the result’s a modern Raspberry Pi-based handheld gaming laptop.
There are many designs floating round for Raspberry Pi handhelds, however they are usually on the chunky aspect. Even when they use a comparatively compact “Zero” mannequin of Raspberry Pi single-board laptop (SBC), the ultimate product tends to be thick when you add the opposite elements and the enclosure. Sinclair’s resolution was to easily omit the enclosure and assemble the GamerCard as a stack of PCBs.
And the GamerCard appears to be like loads nicer than you would possibly anticipate from that description. If we confirmed you the pictures with out telling you in regards to the development, you’d in all probability by no means guess that it’s a stack of PCBs. The match and end are phenomenal, as is the commercial design. That design purposefully resembles retail reward card packaging and may even hold on show racks meant for reward playing cards.
The GamerCard can be fairly succesful in relation to gaming. It has a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W SBC, a high-quality 4” IPS LCD, tactile snap-dome push buttons (together with for the shoulder buttons on the again), two audio system (every with a mono amp, leading to stereo sound), USB and HDMI ports, and even a Qwiic connector for mods and growth. Energy comes from an inner 1600mAh LiPo battery that prices by a USB-C port.
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W isn’t significantly highly effective, however it’s greater than sufficient for lots of gaming. It handles emulation nicely for 4th technology and earlier consoles. And it’s good for PICO-8 and different “fantasy consoles,” in addition to many indie video games designed particularly to run on low-power {hardware}. And, after all, GamerCard has a Raspberry Pi laptop inside and you should utilize it for laptop stuff along with gaming. Join a USB keyboard and laptop computer to make use of it as a pocket PC!
If you need a GamerCard, you should buy one proper now from Sinclair’s web site for £125.00, which is a fairly darn whole lot.
