Those of us in our 30s now were prime targets for the Tamagotchi craze in the late 1990s, and even now we remain prime targets for the nostalgia surrounding Tamagotchis. Many of us still have fond memories of taking care of our Tamagotchi pets and cleaning up after their messes. But get a real old-school Tamagotchi and you’ll likely be amazed at just how primitive the device was. For example, it didn’t even have a backlight for the screen, making it impossible to play with your pet during a long car ride. That’s where Make It For Less comes in, reviving the concept in the form of Macrogachi.
A big part of the original Tamagotchi design was its small size. “Tamagotchi” is a Japanese portmanteau that accurately describes the form factor as an “egg watch.” Bandai designed the devices to fit on keychains, so the screens were tiny and the buttons were only suitable for small children’s fingers. Make It For Less wanted to take the same basic concept but scale it up to something that adults could handle more easily and make it more enjoyable with improvements.
The biggest change is the screen. Compared to the screen on the original Tamagotchi, this thing is huge. It’s a 3.5-inch full-color TFT LCD with a resolution of 480×320, and it even has a touchscreen feature – although there are no plans to use it at the moment. This provides plenty of space for beautiful colorful graphics and, of course, a backlight for playing in the dark.
This screen is connected to an ESP32 development board via SPI. The ESP32 has plenty of processing power, so there is room to replicate and expand Tamagotchi functionality. The ESP32 also has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, which could be used for trading virtual pets, Pokémon-style.
And here’s the big tama-gotchi catch here: this project is not yet finished, and Make It For Less is still working to flesh out the idea. So it’s not consumer-ready and there is no demo to follow. However, there is an advantage: Make It For Less is looking for suggestions and even help with designing the graphics. So you have a chance to influence the future of this project and give us the grown-up Tamagotchis we’ve been longing for.
Source: www.hackster.io