The Uzebox: an Open Source Hardware Games Console 104
angry tapir writes "Lots of people are familiar with open source software. Open source hardware, however, is still more of niche category. The Uzebox is an open source, 'retro minimalist' 8-bit games console, licensed under version 3.0 of the GNU GPL. 'The console uses an overclocked ATmega644 microcontroller and classic Super Nintendo controllers, supports 256 colors and 4 sound channels and has an SD card interface from which games can be loaded from.'"
This is Open Source done right (Score:4, Insightful)
I was expecting some fanboyistic "this will take on Sony and Microsoft!" or something similar. People aren't going to chose some DIY console over something where all the hard work is done for them, like has been done by Sony, MS, and Nintendo.
However, that's not what this is at all. This is awesome, and exactly the sort of thing Open Source is great at: making projects that are geek-centric, geek-powered, and just plain A-Z geek.
A 'retro-minimalist' 8-bit console using SNES controllers? What could possibly be more geek than that? It's fantastic.
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It might be retro, but what does it say about open sources ability to compete against closed source? It seems it's currently over 20 years behind.
*shrug*
Yeah, maybe it's not your cup of tea.
Personally, I don't think it is a matter of behind, or even any kind of competition. I just think Uzebox is really cool, and has a lot of fun games. Also, I like the challenge of programming for systems with limited hardware.
If you want something more powerful, check out this post [slashdot.org] pointing out, among other things, some ARM-based hardware.
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[citation needed]
Re:This is Open Source done right (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about scale...
In hardware, yes absolutely... The cost of producing hardware is high and this will always make it extremely difficult for smaller groups or individuals to compete against the large manufacturers.
In software, where the barriers of entry are lower, open source is doing extremely well... Android, Firefox, and Linux is in everything from TVs, Routers and all manner of networking kit, Phones, all the way up to massive database servers and supercomputers. Linux and BSD are running on thousands of devices that people don't even realise and if you added them all up you would probably find that Linux is the most widespread OS by quite large a margin.
In my house alone, i know that linux runs on my TV, my Satellite receiver, my gps, my wireless ap and my phone.
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It's all about scale...
And frequency of updates...FOSS really shines by putting something out there that is a little bit raw (initially), and refining it often. This obviously works better for software than it does for hardware.
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It might be retro, but what does it say about open sources ability to compete against closed source? It seems it's currently over 20 years behind.
What does it matter? It's all about building stuff for ourselves.
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It might be retro, but what does it say about open sources ability to compete against closed source?
The concept of Open Source competing with .. .well anything is pure Slashdot idealistic fantasy. It's really only good for copying what's already out there. Money is obviously a great motivator for innovation.
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Perhaps, but open source doesn't have to be small-scale geeky DIY. Take Firefox, Linux, Android, for some examples of open source software that do compete with the proprietary software.
Is there room in the market for a console that's more open than Xbox, PS3 or Wii? I certainly hope so, but also you want proprietary game developers to publish games for it, and that's not going to be easy. You need a big player base to draw them in, and you need to have lots of games to get players interested. And in the end
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If I was in the same room, I would punch both participants of this "conversation" in the face and ask the rest to help throwing them out, because they are obviously Microsoft astroturfers -- one for making an idiotic claim, another for "agreeing" with it.
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Perhaps, but open source doesn't have to be small-scale geeky DIY.
I never said it did. I said geekiness is where it excels (regardless of scale).
Take Firefox, Linux, Android, for some examples of open source software that do compete with the proprietary software.
All very geek-centric projects. Firefox and Android have found consumer success, but not because of anything to do with being open source.
Is there room in the market for a console that's more open than Xbox, PS3 or Wii?
Absolutely not, and this was the crux of my point. Nobody gives a shit outside of the nerd bunch. What practical benefit will the average person see from an open source console? Very little, if any at all. But the cost would be far more immense than the average nerd can comprehend.
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Android has found success thanks to being open source. If it wasn't open source, how many handset manufacturers do you think would have given it the time of day?
Plus, lets not forget that Android's success can be measured in other ways - the Open Handset Alliance and their push for the entire mobile ecosystem to simply be more open. I'd say that's been a fair success as well, thanks to the open nature of Android.
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Android has found success thanks to being open source.
Not even 1% of Android buyers bought it for being open source.
If it wasn't open source, how many handset manufacturers do you think would have given it the time of day?
Pretty much all of the ones that did. Don't you realize that the majority of Android phones don't ship with the open source version of Android? They really don't care that it's open source. Why should they?
They chose Android because it's the best OS they available for them to use. Being open source, specifically, has nothing to do with that.
That's the problem with geeks, something I have to point out over and over again. You guys think that every
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Except you've clearly missed the point entirely. Android wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as it is today if it wasn't open source. Yes, most manufacturers release their own version of it, with their own customisations and UI's, but they all base it off the same open source code. When Google pushes a new version, the manufacturers update their own versions with that code. No Android manufacturer has taken the code and ran with it, diverting off the official path to update and support it themselves. An
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Except you've clearly missed the point entirely. Android wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as it is today if it wasn't open source.
Nonsense. Not a single person or company gives a shit. The end user doesn't know or care. The handset makers don't care, the carriers don't care.
They want to customize it, but that can just as easily be done with a closed source platform.
Being open source is every reason why they chose it. If it was closed source, why would they bother?
Android 3.0 is closed source, and it's being used.
They'd bother because they don't have a proper "app phone" OS of their own. They'd just as gladly license Android without it being open source (like tablet makers are doing with Honeycomb). Their alternatives at the time wer
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Linux. Geek Centric "project"
LOL. Linux runs the world now. Routers, NAS boxes, mobile phones, servers, supercomputers... all of these things.
Just because only us geeks run it on the desktop doesn't really mean squat.
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Linux. Geek Centric "project"
LOL. Linux runs the world now. Routers, NAS boxes, mobile phones, servers, supercomputers... all of these things.
Just because only us geeks run it on the desktop doesn't really mean squat.
Who are you replying to?
In the post you are responding to, I wrote:
Perhaps, but open source doesn't have to be small-scale geeky DIY.
I never said it did. I said geekiness is where it excels (regardless of scale).
Again, I never said open source can't be successful on a large scale.
And to think Linux isn't geek-centric is delusional. No one runs Linux specifically, outside of a geek niche. Those routers? They are run by geek network admins. Those WiFi access points? People aren't buying them because they run Linux.
And "servers, supercomputers"? Um... geeks run those things.
As for mobile phones, Android *isn't* Linux. It doesn't even run a proper Linux
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You said linux was a geek-centric project.
I gave you several examples of places it's deployed on a large scale and is not just used by geeks, whether "specifically" or otherwise. That's what I was replying to. Perhaps you need to work on your reading comprehension.
As for iPhones vS Android, the best figures I can find had Apple at 108 million total units by March this year, Android were 101 million by the end of last year. I have a funny feeling that in the mean time Android will have caught up, given its m
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also you want proprietary game developers to publish games for it, and that's not going to be easy.
That's gonna be just about impossible, you mean. Not gonna happen; they're too attached to DRM.
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That hasn't stopped them from publishing games for Linux or Android. An Open Source console doesn't have to be any different.
The big question is: what's in it for the developer? Low entry cost? They already have that on the PC.
If you were somehow able to get market penetration, then the developers would follow. But since you can't get market penetration on a pure gaming device without any games, it needs to be something more than just a console. Like a harddisk recorder, or something. An affordable MythTV b
Re:This is Open Source done right (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, maybe I will be modded down here, but its a damn ATmega644, maybe overclocked with SNES controllers and a crap DAC hooked up. We have been doing this for years, back even on the old Pic16f84. Granted this is in color with what looks like an impressive API but for the same price you can get hooked up with a Propeller that has a hell of allot more features and even supports VGA resolutions out of box. Not to mention the video/sound timing issues you will have with this thing when you want to try to work outside the API. This is not the 2600 days where we have to watch for Vsyinc like its life or death:P
The ARM kit over at spark fun has way more features, cheaper, AND runs at 72mhz. http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10664 [sparkfun.com] Even if you want to "market" this thing for beginners, an Arduino has much better support and gaggits to play with. Game programing, especially with this kind of setup, will be hard.
Sigh. Hell, even putting a 3 dollar CLPD would help the graphic performance alot on that. This whole article seems more of a sales pitch than a real project.
Re:This is Open Source done right (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you are a nerd hipster, how fantastic for you.
My point is that this is the way to approach these things. Open source, DIY, geek projects are about doing things you want to see done, not worrying about toppling the proprietary companies. If that's your goal, you're in for a shock. But if you want to make cool things to play with and work with, this is the way to go. Just look at Linux. It sucks for general, consumer desktop use, but it's fantastic for geeks to play with and to also get real work done on.
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No, it's like someone coming up with a different way of getting the frying grease into their car. If you're into that sort of thing (and this is (supposed to be) "News for nerds, stuff that matters"), then this is interesting.
If you're not, no one is telling you to go out and do this, or like this, read the comments about it.
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What's it to you? If someone likes something, what sort of psychological disorder does it take to put someone down for it? Nobody's telling *you* what to like.
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I disagree, this is an old trick in a "new" (I did it like that cause its like what 3 years old now) wrapper tagging along "open source" in its description.
I dont know why you guys get all red faced and giggly over those 2 words, but honestly I think someone could reinvent pen and paper, add Open Source to the end of it and you people would shit yourselves over it.
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Who cares if it's new? That's part of what I'm trying to convey. All that matters is it's something someone wants to do, it's fun, and they *can* do it.
What do you care if someone else likes something you don't like? What a sad, sad way to spend your time.
My initial post was this same sentiment, but in the reverse direction. Open source advocates tend to (at least on nerd forums like slashdot) get all overexcited and try to get everyone else to run their shit. You're the flip side of that coin, giving peopl
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I am on the exact opposite side of that coin, but I prefer to not to add a buzzword to stuff I do, also the stuff I do tends to not be "look AT me! Buy my wares!", but helping people understand things to get whatever their awesome idea is up and going.
I tend to think helping people is far better than being a nerd pop star for a day, while tossing a noobie an "open source" board that doesnt make any more sense to them than their NES does
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"What could possibly be more geek than that? It's fantastic."
A steampunk car built from scratch.
And using SNES controllers.
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Since that "geek-centric, geek-powered, and just plain A-Z geek" thing known as "The Internet" is an Open Source project, I would say your characterization and patronizing dismissal of Open Source as being for niches only is a lot of horseshit.
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Since that "geek-centric, geek-powered, and just plain A-Z geek" thing known as "The Internet" is an Open Source project, I would say your characterization and patronizing dismissal of Open Source as being for niches only is a lot of horseshit.
Glad to see you still can't comprehend logic.
1. The Internet is a network, it's not an open source project.
2. I was never patronizing *or* dismissive of open source in my post. In fact, quite the contrary!
3. Even if the internet *was* an open source project, that doesn't disprove in any way the notion that geek-things are "exactly the sort of thing Open Source is great at".
But please, don't ever change. Your buffoonery never fails to amuse.
Yeah, but is it free to download? (Score:2)
I joke, but let's face it, how often do FOSS advocates pay for anything?
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Something tells me that businesses won't be needing an 8-bit gaming console.
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I don't know about you, but I approved about $7200 in RHEL subscriptions this morning.
Approving isn't the same as paying. I'm sure elrous0 wasn't talking about businesses.
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Well I have bought about 4 games for Linux in the last 6 months, and all of the Humble Bundles. You might want to look at the Linux sales figures for the Humble Bundles. So yes FOSS people pay for software.
http://www.wolfire.com/humble/ [wolfire.com]
http://www.humblebundle.com/ [humblebundle.com]
Linux users when given a choice are even more willing to pay more than those on other Operating Systems. Windows users are cheap skates and always want something for nothing.
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Linux users when given a choice are even more willing to pay more than those on other Operating Systems. Windows users are cheap skates and always want something for nothing.
Correction: a small subset of Linux users are willing to pay more.
And this is a rather artificial example. There's a lot of pent up demand for gaming, so they are paying not just for the game, but for the game on Linux, in support of the few companies that toss them a bone.
It's definitely interesting that Linux users pay more, on average (and that's just *average* anyway), but it doesn't all of a sudden turn Linux users into big spenders.
Really, my DYI setup kills Sony MS Ninteno (Score:2)
My DIY setup: booksized chassis Mini ITX formfactor H67 board with Core i7 2600K and 5750 graphics board, 8GB RAM, SSD boot and multi Terabyte spindle disk. On any metric (FPS etc) or subjective criteria, any games available as console and PC totally suck compared to the PC system. DIY game machines rule.
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My DIY setup: booksized chassis Mini ITX formfactor H67 board with Core i7 2600K and 5750 graphics board, 8GB RAM, SSD boot and multi Terabyte spindle disk.
Fantastic. This is exactly what I'm talking about. *You* built a device for *yourself*, and didn't take on any fantasy about killing Sony, MS, or Nintendo...
Oh, your subject title change? How disappointing.
"Really, my DYI setup kills Sony MS Ninteno"
No, it doesn't. Sorry to burst your bubble, but *your* PC will kill nothing. You should be happy that it works great for you, and quit with this lame gamer fanboy bullshit.
On any metric (FPS etc) or subjective criteria, any games available as console and PC totally suck compared to the PC system.
Bullshit. There are plenty of games designed for the console which translate poorly to the
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I'm as geek as the next guy but this seems as boring and outdated as hell. It's needlessly retro.
Awesome (Score:2)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
http://uzebox.org/shop/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=35 [uzebox.org]
70$ + power supply + cable(s) and controllers about 20$
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Or in other words, you could go to a flea market and buy a NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis, and maybe a saturn and PSX too for what you will pay for one of these devices. There is homebrew on all of those platforms. This is way, way, WAY too expensive and will teach you NOTHING you can't learn programming your PC.
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http://uzebox.org/shop/catalog/
$70 seems to be the magic number. What I want to know more about is the video compatibility- is it really NTSC-only?
PAL? RTFA. (Score:2)
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Does it really matter? Most tv sets these days are perfectly capable of handling both...
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Actually, we don't need PAL has there is already one version (the EUzebox) that support the scart interface and get rid of the RGB converter :).
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It's cheaper, comes pre-assambled and should work equally well for Americans with a SCART TV.
Apart from the joy of soldering it yourself, why would you buy the kit?
Aren't they going to get in trouble for the blatantly copied copyrighted games, though?
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and should work equally well for Americans with a SCART TV.
Yeah, the 3 people in the US that have a SCART TV will most likely be thrilled.
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Seriously? Don't TV's come with SCART in the US? Then what kind of pre-HDMI/DVI connectors did you use?
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Then what kind of pre-HDMI/DVI connectors did you use?
Component, composite or S-video.
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From the uzebox store [uzebox.org]:
Important: A TV set with a SCART input (RGB) and and support for NTSC video is necessary for this kit!
NTSC and SCART are not mutually exclusive, it seems :-(
(Also on the page you linked, albeit in German first.)
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Yeah SCART was standardized in the US and called EIA multiport but you almost never actually saw it in TVs.
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The problem to me is price - I don't mind playing with things like this and knocking up games for them but £50 / â50 / 70$ is a lot of money to ask for this. I didn't pay that for a GP2X and that knocks the socks off this and is portable, handheld, with its own LCD screen, has TV-out, dual-200MHz ARM cores, runs Linux, etc.
This is closer to the "build-your-own-pong" style kits you can get from Vellemans but at stupid cost for something quite simple. If it only has two chips, why does it c
Link to the actual project... (Score:5, Informative)
... instead of the Computerworld advert farm:
http://belogic.com/uzebox/index.asp [belogic.com]
Sheer comedy, such a geektastic project being hosted with ASP?
Don't bother to mod this up, save your points for something less karma-whorey.
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My guess as to why the 'advert farm' pages make it to Slashdot's front page most of the time, while original links don't: the secondary sources provide a good overview and are easier for a general audience to understand.
In this case, I wouldn't have even bothered looking at the project page because it is too much information thrown up all at once. After reading the secondary source I could see that there were several components of the project that I'm interested in, so I'll probably head over to the projec
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Well... whenever an original link is posted, it tends to get slashdotted. My guess is that if an original link is supplied, the editors sometimes seek out an article from a mainstream source as to try to avoid the slashdotting effect.
Re:Link to the actual project... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fair enough ;-)
Looking back at it, Computerworld isn't the worst offender - but I did get a bloody great big javascripty overlay thing when I visited the site first.
A link to the project site in the summary wouldn't have gone amiss though.
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Yeah those ads annoy me too...
"A link to the project site in the summary wouldn't have gone amiss though."
Yes that's totally true. I blame lack of sleep when I was posting it :-)
On the plus side, one of the things I like about my job is that I have the freedom to write about cool open source projects like Uzebox (and Alec is a really great guy). For
Other Interesting Hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Uzebox is cool!
While on the subject, I'd also like to point out some other projects I've found interesting:
OpenPandora [openpandora.org], a community-designed, Linux-running handheld. The specs are pretty impressive, by today's standards, but were even more impressive when it was first introduced. Best thing is, they're now manufacturing and shipping!
For those who like to tinker themselves, there is the BeagleBoard [beagleboard.org], a cheap (as they come) single board computer with impressive specs, designed for open source software. The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] lists a number of alternatives, some of which may be more powerful and/or cheaper.
One interesting alternative to the BeagleBoard is the Hawkboard [linuxfordevices.com], which is backed by its own community [hawkboard.org]. It's slightly less powerful than the BeagleBoard, but, at 89 USD, also costs quite a bit less.
And then there's the ever-popular Arduino [arduino.cc], which comes in several varieties. You can buy them assembled starting at about 20 USD, or build your own for under 10 USD [instructables.com]. They can be extended with "shields", e.g. to get extra I/O capabilities. Pretty cool stuff!
Personally, I am still tinkering around with resistors and transistors and the like, designing and simulating circuits with Qucs [sourceforge.net] (which I feel is a lot more production-ready than that website suggests) and my Nokia N900, but any of the above hardware looks like it might be a nice next step up.
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Don't forget this wacky idea [the-nd.com]. There is some ambiguity as to whether the final hardware specs will be open source though. But it is possible with off-the-shelf components.
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Re:Other Interesting Hardware (Score:5, Informative)
The Pandora isn't actually shipping - again. Been in production for three years and some people who ordered on the first few days **still** haven't received one.
For the past few months you could pay almost the price of the console again in order to get a "Premium" queue-jumper Pandora before even the first pre-orderers from three years ago - after the first few hundred they stopped that and they have said they only offered that because otherwise they would have gone bankrupt and been unable to ship anybody's order.
Current status is that they are abandoning their PCB manufacturer for another, because it's taken them three years to actually get the PCB manufacturer to do anything worthwhile (they accept any excuse and the "community" eggs them on to be nice to everyone because they have a shed-load of money invested in the hope of receiving a device that's not materialised in significant numbers after three years) and now all the PCB's that have been sitting in the manufacturer's storage for all that time have rotted - which means basically starting months of work all over again with another manufacturer.
And they can't even ship Premium orders any more because of that. They've shipped maybe a thousand or two units in total, and a lot of those have gone on eBay almost immediately because with only a thousand units in the wild, most of the software is just ports of Ubuntu software and a couple of emulators.
They still haven't finished "batch 1" yet, and have had a ton of returns and problems (Wifi is the latest - the new boards produced just don't have working wifi because nobody was testing it properly, so they all had to go back) - buttons being faulty, cases cracking, you name it they have problems with it.
They are currently threatening to sue the PCB manufacturer but how they intend to do that while on the edge of bankruptcy is uncertain. Basically, you aren't going to see it in significant numbers enough to attract developers, and certainly not for years (current batch orders haven't even started yet and probably won't for another year, and they have to re-order all the cases, plastics, etc. for that batch)
The running joke among Pandora-watchers is "Two Months" - that's how long everything is said to take until they are back in business and gets stated with regularity every two months for the past three years.
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Yes, you are right. Pandora has been plagued by manufacturing problems. The nice thing is that they are throwing a lot of that out in the open. I think it's a nice illustration of how challenging it can be to get hardware manufactured. I hope we can learn a lot from this experience and do better in future. This, and the fact that I still think Pandora is very cool, is why I hope the project succeeds - at least well enough to make it to the next device. In the meantime, my heart goes out to the team, and to
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Current status is that they are abandoning their PCB manufacturer for another... all the PCB's that have been sitting in the manufacturer's storage for all that time have rotted
This would be a complete 180 on what the production team have been claiming, so (as in "investor") I would be very interested to hear if you have a citation for that.
Re:Other Interesting Hardware (Score:5, Informative)
This would be a complete 180 on what the production team have been claiming, so (as in "investor") I would be very interested to hear if you have a citation for that.
Changing supplier and threatening legal action:
http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/4058-wifi-tests-and-circuitco-2011-06-17/page__view__findpost__p__74759 [openpandora.org]
Oxidisation problems:
http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/4058-wifi-tests-and-circuitco-2011-06-17/page__view__findpost__p__74948 [openpandora.org]
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Well... crap.
Thanks for following up.
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*cough* Apologies will be accepted in the form of cash, cheque, postal order, ...
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while I dont like pandora, its a out of date joke ran by perfectionist but pc boards dont rot after 3 years, that is horseshit, also chi-co pcb makers dont give a shit about your boards unless your not paying them, so delays and storage seems like someone couldn't pay the bills even after taking in hundreds if not thousands of preorders. Problems are mostly the fault of the designers, amateurs that whip out questionable designs and sent to the cheapest shittiest producer, your software engineer is not also
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oh like leaving copper exposed to tarnish? yea thats a professional design there no solder mask no tinning?
and why have they not gotten a lawsuit started, why have they not gone with another company by now? (yea you can do that) and why is their "transparency" always about how something else is keeping THEM from doing something, its NEVER their fault, its the FCC testing, its the board making, its manufacturing that causes the case cracks and not the people who designed an inferior case.
excuses lies and whe
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I actually own a Pandora.
Besides the one usb port on it being a little strange, it's worked wonderfully for me. I had preordered it, but ended up just paying the extra money to get it shipped sooner. I have yet to regret it. I would advise getting at least one fast 16GB SD card for it, so you can have plenty of programs, but the Pandora is able to emulate psx games. I've also watched videos on it without any problems. (PanPlayer works the best).
The keyboard is a little strange, but the screen and ba
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Don't forget the Ben Nanonote [qi-hardware.com] - where the whole design from the bits and bytes down to the nuts and bolts are open source.
Richard Stallman approves. (Score:1)
from (Score:1)
Summary by Paul McCartney.
I don't usually harp on these things... (Score:2)
... but this is just funny: "... an SD card interface from which games can be loaded from."
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put up with!
Unfortunatly ... NOT OPENSOURCE (Score:1)
console with closed hardware, open software (Score:1)
Foxconn NT425 with Intel Atom 1.8 GHz 64-bit CPU and integrated GPU
1 GB DDR2 800 RAM
16 GB class 10 SDHC flash for main storage (no HDD)
Gigabit NIC, 802.11 b/g/n wireless
Dual-analog PS2/3-style wireless gamepad
VGA to Composite/S-Video adapter
I'd use a stripped Debian installation with networking, ALSA, X and video acceleration but not much else, and creat
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What exactly are you doing that anyone on Slashdot couldn't make themselves, better, cheaper, using components they already have and software that already exists (there are a million and one game-launcher-style apps out there, most of them built for emulators but supporting just about anything you can run via a command line)? Have you checked what X and no video acceleration does to things as simple as TuxRacer (Hint: I had this same idea but for a small desktop-based console for my parents ages ago, and s
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Nothing. That's not the point.
"For that price, you can pick up handheld open source consoles that do the same"
Name them, ignorant jackass.
"Additionally, what you describe is actually all in place or surpassed on my normal laptop"
This isn't a review of your laptop.
"You really have to have a USP - unique selling point."
My "USP" is that you can play a shitload of games out of the box, are onlin
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Also cool: (Score:2)
Also really cool: The RBox
http://rossum.posterous.com/20131601 [posterous.com]
It uses an ARM CPU to generate a TV picture on the fly. The display needs to be generated scanline by scanline, sort of like an Atari 2600.