#a408 :: Meggy Jr. RGB

March 30, 2009

It’s finished.

My son and I just soldered the last wires into place on this tonight, and it lit up perfectly.

The Meggy Jr. RGB – a handheld video game with open-source, programmable memory chip – is ready for business.

Eight solid hours we hunched over a dizzying array of resistors, capacitors, transistors and LED, scrupulously following the Evil Mad Science Shop’s instructions – I held the soldering iron to the contacts, he fed the solder into the connections – achieving a meticulous rhythm. Both of us thrilled to death to be working on something so fun, and with so much potential.

We downloaded the Arduino environment just before bedtime, and tomorrow night we’ll start dipping our toes into the simple (but nonetheless scary) business of trying to program a game.

If you’ve ever considered soldering together a little electronics kit, this one is great. It’s beautifully designed, and pretty damn easy to build.

Especially if you have a 9-year-old son who loves games.

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