The Gameduino 3X is here
Eight years ago I launched the original Gameduino 1, one of the very first Arduino shields for game makers. Today we're shipping the first of the Gameduino 3X. It's a great leap forward in graphics technology, plus it has 100X the graphics storage capability. The Excamera store is shipping both the 4.3" and 7" GD3X.
Gameduino 3 used an FT810 EVE graphics processor. Gameduino 3X uses the next-generation BT815. The graphics storage capability is massively increased - 815 has ASTC image compression, as well as an onboard 8Mbyte flash. (If you're not familiar with ASTC, it's a graphics compression technology that lets you fit up to 10X more graphics into memory.) The 815 can handle Unicode fonts, including Chinese and Japanese. There are many other improvements, and I'll be talking about them in future updates.
Here's the bare PCB before final assembly, test and loading. Physically it's the same as its predecessors. The actual layout is all-new, with much more attention to signal routing and bypassing. The 8-pin chip on the left ("U4") is the 8Mbyte flash. The first 8K is loaded with configuration data, which is how the GD3X knows if it has the 4.3" (480x272) or the 7" (800x480) screen.
Applications are 100% compatible with the Gameduino 3, though you will need to update to the new version of the GD library because it knows how to initialize the GD3X.
Right now the Excamera Store has stock, and other channels will have it in stock shortly. It's so great to be bringing out this next generation of Gameduino, 8 years after the original Gameduino 1:
year model memory GPU ---- ----- ------ --- 2011 GD1 32K Xilinx FPGA 2013 GD2 256K FT800 2017 GD3 1M FT810 2019 GD3X 9M BT815Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your support of the Gameduino project.