Meggy Jr RGB is a kit make your own handheld video game console based around an 8x8 RGB LED matrix display. Designed to be easy to program, arduino compatible, open source, and hackable.
Meggy Jr RGB
LED Matrix Game Development Kit
In Stock
These products normally ship from our San Francisco warehouse in 1-3 business days.
Standard Kit: $75
Meggy Jr RGB kit with basic handle set
Super Kit: $95
Meggy Jr RGB Kit with basic handle set + USB-TTL programming cable & Bonus lead forming tool
Product Description
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Meggy Jr RGB is a handheld platform for developing your own pixel-scale video games.
Featuring a fully addressable 8x8 RGB LED matrix display, big fat comfy button switches, customizable handles, a lo-fi audio transducer, and even 8 extra LEDs for lives, score, ammo, or level, Meggy Jr RGB is a great little kit you won't want to miss. Meggy Jr is fast, programmable, open source, and hackable. And fun!
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Meggy Jr RGB is a little sister to our Peggy and Peggy 2 LED display kits, and was designed with a different focus-- less soldering, more pixels in your palms. The 8x8 RGB matrix display provides a whole lot of pixels (192 LED elements), and the 8 auxiliary LEDs bring the grand total up to 200. The six tough extra-long-life buttons have excellent click-feel, and multiple programming interfaces let you take control of exactly what you're playing with.
Meggy Jr RGB kits have been upgraded as of summer 2009, and are now shipping with with the awesome new ATmega328P microcontroller.
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Building Meggy
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Meggy Jr RGB comes as a soldering kit [?]. Basic electronic soldering skill is required, and you provide standard soldering tools: a soldering iron + solder and small ("flush") wire clippers, as well as a small pair of pliers (e.g., needle nose). If you have them, a hot glue gun and wire strippers will also come in handy. No additional knowledge of electronics is presumed or required.
Easy "through-hole" construction ("No surface-mount nothin' nowhere!") and clear, full-color printed instructions come with the kit.
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Assembly time: 1-3 hours typical, depending on soldering skill. Kids (ages 10+) who have soldered before should be able to build their Meggy Jr kits with minor assistance and supervision. An extended introduction to the project and its design is available here.
Meggy Jr RGB includes a battery box and can run on batteries (3 'AAA' cells) or you can get an optional ac adapter for endless playtime.
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Interchangeable Handles
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Meggy Jr RGB is designed to be mounted inside a "handle set" -- a comfortable to hold wooden or plastic case. You can make, mod, customize, and swap out handle sets to suit your taste. Different handle sets can completely change what the Meggy Jr looks and feels like.
Shown here is Meggy Jr RGB in a smoke (transparent grey) colored batwing handle set.
You can design your own custom handles, starting from our templates which are available here-- either to make them on your own or to have them fabbed by laser shops like Ponoko.
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Programming Meggy Jr RGB
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The microcontroller in the Meggy Jr RGB kit comes pre-programmed with "Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes," a pixel-blasting side-scrolling shoot-em-up with bombs, lasers, and ever advancing (red) dots that aim to ruin your whole day. Once you've built the kit, you can get started playing immediately-- Absolutely no computer access or programming is needed between opening the box and blasting vicious vegetables.
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If you're inclined, Meggy Jr RGB can do a whole lot more: it is designed as a platform for programming your own games.
Meggy Jr RGB can be programmed in the popular Arduino software environment, through an optional USB-TTL cable. Mac, Windows, and Linux computers are all well supported, and all of the software that you'll need is available to download-- for free --online.
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To get a head start, you can download the Meggy Jr RGB Programing guide here-- it's a detailed guide to our simple library routines for using Meggy Jr RGB. The library provides an interrupt-based screen redraw at a default rate of 120 Hz, multiple brightness levels, and simple functions to write data to the video buffer. So easy a kid could do it. (Proof: Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes was written by a 14-year old.)
The Meggy Jr RGB library is an evolving open source project and your own code contributions are welcome. We have a growing number of user-contributed games and other programs available for download; many of these are listed on the Evil Mad Scientist Wiki. Even if you don't want to write your own programs, you can download other people's programs and run them on your Meggy Jr RGB.
AVR-GCC users: Programming through an AVR ISP programmer (e.g., the USBtinyISP) is also supported.
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Kit Configurations
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Meggy Jr RGB is an open-source kit. In keeping with that spirit, we are offering these kits and the parts for them in different configurations for flexibility.
1. Meggy Jr RGB Standard Kit ($75) includes the printed circuit board, preprogrammed ATmega328P microcontroller, LED display, 8 extra LEDs, battery holder, buttons, and all other components needed to build the Meggy Jr, plus laser cut handles in clear acrylic.
2. Meggy Jr RGB Super Kit ($95) Contains everything in the Meggy Jr RGB Standard Kit plus a USB-TTL programming cable and a bonus resistor lead forming tool.
3. Options and accessories: AC adapters, USB-TTL cables, and other related items.
4. You can also get the Meggy Jr PCB separately, or the LED matrix display separately, as well as laser-cut acrylic handle sets.
5. Classroom Packs of Meggy Jr RGB kits are also now available: bulk-packaged kits for 10 or more students! Click here for details.
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Options, Accessories, and Parts for Meggy Jr RGB:
AC Adapters
Meggy Jr RGB is designed to run on batteries and the kits come complete with a battery holder. We also have super energy efficient wall-plug AC adapters, 5 V DC, regulated, 600 mA+. Two versions are available: one for US/Canada, and an international multi-plug version that comes with US/UK/EUR/AUS plugs. Both versions come with the appropriate power jack to solder onto the Meggy Jr circuit board.
Handle sets
Laser-cut handle sets for Meggy Jr RGB, for customizing or as replacements. Handles are available in two different shapes (basic and "batwing"), and in different colors of laser-cut acrylic.
Major parts, a la carte
You can get the Meggy Jr RGB printed circuit board, LED matrix display, and/or the microcontroller separately, either for building it on your own or as spares.
The microcontroller comes pre-programmed with the default Meggy Jr RGB firmware, including the Arduino bootloader. If you have an older Meggy Jr RGB kit that came with the ATmega168, you could build it with this chip instead as a nice upgrade-- it's got twice the memory.
About our kits
We take great pride in our kit designs; we believe in clear instructions, unambiguous labeling, goodies, and where appropriate, including extras of small, easy to lose and/or break components. Assembly of the kit is straightforward with our clear instructions. If you would like a preview, you can download a copy of the instruction packet here (3.9 MB PDF file).
You should have prior experience soldering and, as mentioned above, basic soldering tools. Read more about what to expect in our kits here.
Lead Free
Meggy Jr RGB circuit boards, components, LEDs and power supplies are all RoHS compliant (lead free). If you're building one of our kits, you'll find that everything works well with either regular or lead-free solder-- whichever you care to use.
Suggested Accessories for Meggy Jr RGB:
$20.00 each
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$12.00 each
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$20.00 each
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$15.00 each
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$15.00 each
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$15.00 each
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$15.00 each
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$22.00 each
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$22 each
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$5 each
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$5 each
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