One way to keep things small is to build a system with plug-in modules, where the brains sit on each module rather than on the platform itself. (Michael)’s Epic Minimalist Entertainment System (EMES) is one of these, and boy is it small. EMES uses the ATtiny10, and you can’t get much smaller than that.

This almost microscopic console uses an equally Lilliputian display – namely a Plessey GPD340 vintage LED display. (If you want to play around with it, check out (Michael’s) reverse engineering project.) There are four ultra-small buttons for control and a buzzer for sound.

The ATtiny10 is an 8 MHz microcontroller with 1 KB of flash and 32 bytes of RAM. It has an 8-bit ADC and surprisingly four GPIO pins. But of course that’s not enough. Not with the display, the four buttons and the buzzer, so (Michael) had to come up with a way to multiplex everything onto four GPIOs.

PB0 is shared by the buttons and the display’s serial data input. PB1 cleverly outputs the same PWM for both the brightness control and the buzzer. When the buzzer is needed, (Michael’s) code switches to a lower frequency and adjusts the display’s duty cycle to keep it readable. PB2 and 3 are serial clock inputs for the two halves of the display. Be sure to check out the heated PONG action in the video after the break!

There’s still a little time to enter the Tiny Games Contest 2024! You have until Tuesday, September 10th, so head over to Hackaday.IO and get started!