Messages

196

Thumby / Re: Addition of third-party games to the pre-loaded set?

« on: November 01, 2021, 04:14:33 PM »

We definitely see this as an option and would love to include more games as they are available and we ship units out. We likely need some game submission infrastructure put in place to make sure those creating games are okay with the idea. Hopefully, we will get something together this week!

My personal worry as I lurk through the forum is that many are still in the process of improving games, so I hesitate to add games not 'finished' to the author's preference. A guideline of submitting a game to be added to Thumby with the author's approval eases my mind.

We can test out hardware functionality here up to the author's preference as a part of this process. Thank you for your input!

Best,
Réna

197

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Are these compatible?

« on: November 01, 2021, 04:04:00 PM »

Hello!

These kits are not made by us and are not compatible with our hardware. I can assure you that our TinyTV kit is the original and it is a lot cooler

Cheers,
Réna

198

Thumby / Re: Thumby Games Store / Publishing

« on: October 28, 2021, 05:05:11 PM »

We definitely want to implement a site or place with all the games that make games easily submittable. We will likely have a GitHub repo for submissions and have a webpage in addition for those that just want to download the games and not mess around too much with the code itself. For now, we internally have a spreadsheet until we implement the final solution.

In the past, we've just put together a webpage on our wiki site for Tiny Arcade & Pocket Arcade games: https://learn.tinycircuits.com/Kits/Tiny-Arcade-All-Games/

Whatever we decide, there will be links to these resources in the web IDE. Do those options sound good, or do you all have some input?

Best,
Réna

199

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Is it broken?

« on: October 25, 2021, 10:35:21 AM »

If you are using a different SD Card than the one that ships with the kit, you would likely need to reformat it to FAT32 as advised in the FAQ on the product page here: https://tinycircuits.com/products/tinytv-diy-kit

The kits ship pre-programmed so there should have been no need to program the board. Did nothing appear on the screen ever? When programming did you get the "Done uploading." message?

If the screen displays the "bootloader" text, it's likely that something is corrupt with the software loaded on the hardware to produce nothing after a successful upload.

Best,
Réna

200

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: TinyTv

« on: October 25, 2021, 10:23:45 AM »

Hello,

The forum as well as the FAQ on the product page are great resources, so thanks for checking them out!

It's likely that the titles of the videos are too long. They need to be shorter than 50 characters and not include any accented letters to be recognized by the tinytv program.

Otherwise, some videos can be corrupted and won't work with the TinyTV. In these cases, I recommend trying to find a different source video or try to convert the video again.

Let me know if those tips help!

Best,
Réna

201

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Is it broken?

« on: October 22, 2021, 12:35:49 PM »

Hello,

The screen is definitely working if you can see the "bootloader" message as you've noticed. Is the hardware you're working with inside the TV enclosure? I'd advise taking it out and re-assembling just the hardware. It's possible the connectors between the SD & audio TinyShield are not fully connected and this could cause strange behavior like what you are describing.

When you first assembled the kit, did you get anything to show up on the screen like "Sd Card not detected" or any videos? Or has it always been a blank screen?

Let me know!

Thanks,
Réna

202

Thumby / Re: Thumby development Discord server or something similar?

« on: October 20, 2021, 02:26:17 PM »

Hello all!

Thank you so much for your interest in chatting with us and others about Thumby!

We have been strongly entertaining the idea of having a TinyCircuits Discord Server. We think it would be beneficial to have one and are looking to start one soon - it will likely be announced via a Kickstarter update, but we are internally discussing the best way to merge/differentiate it with our existing community channels like the forum, and defining what specific role it should serve.

It's a big step to take on what could be a big responsibility for a tiny team, so we appreciate your patience as we work to bring a TinyCircuits Discord server to the public sometime soon!

Let me know if you all have any tips on how to make a good Discord server - we would love the feedback since some of us are new to Discord.

Cheers,
Réna

203

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Do Videos resume from the beginning upon restart of the device?

« on: October 19, 2021, 02:07:06 PM »

Hiya,

There isn't a current 'save your spot' feature, but you can change the tinytv mode to the video player mode so that you would be able to step through videos and play/pause/fast forward through them. You can change the mode and a few other features using the settings menu: https://learn.tinycircuits.com/Kits/TinyTV-Tutorial/

Thank you for your support! We love making cool stuff 

Cheers,
Réna

204

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Trouble shooting

« on: October 15, 2021, 12:22:26 PM »

MacOS Big Sur has had some Big problems over the past year, so I'm glad this problem was resolvable, albeit not in a direct way.

Thank you for reporting back that removing the hidden files worked! This is the first time I've seen this bug, but I'm sure it won't be the last - glad to know there is a solution! 

-Réna

205

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Trouble shooting

« on: October 14, 2021, 12:32:45 PM »

Wow! I've never seen that happen before, and I've been debugging TinyTV problems since we started selling them. Thank you so much for sending me the videos and screenshots.

It looks like there are some invisible files that your version of MacOS has created and these hidden files are causing problems. What version of MacOS are you using?

From this page, to reveal hidden files on an SD Card: https://mackeeper.com/blog/show-hidden-mac-files/ -
"How do I view hidden files on an SD card on my Mac?
Whenever you insert an SD card or connect another data storage to your Mac, it appears in the left panel in Finder within Locations. If you go to that location and press Shift + Command (⌘) + Period, you’ll be able to see hidden files on an SD card, a USB drive, an external hard drive, and so on."

The above page will also instruct you on how to delete these hidden files that start with "." and that should remove the problems hopefully. You will also see a .DS_STORE file and here's some more quick info on what that file means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store

Let me know if that helps!

Cheers,
Réna

206

TinyTV & Tiny Video Player / Re: Trouble shooting

« on: October 13, 2021, 07:55:16 PM »

Ozzy,

All the titles of the .tsv videos on the SD Card should be shorter than 50 characters long and should not include any characters outside of the ASCII characters - not following these rules would produce strange results like what you are describing, but it doesn't appear that a title error is the problem here.

Can you send a video of the behavior you're seeing and a screenshot of the files on the SD Card? It sounds like the videos you put onto the SD Card are somehow duplicating themselves, is that true?

The channel numbers are randomly decided using modulo in the tinytv program, so every once in a while funny characters get inserted with a larger amount of videos - this is a bug that can happen sometimes.

It might also be helpful for you to send one of the videos you've converted to see if I can duplicate the problem here. Let me know!

Best,
Réna

P.S. Bebop as in Cowboy Bebop??

207

Tiny Arcade & Pocket Arcade / Re: Maze

« on: October 13, 2021, 07:15:48 PM »

:O!!!

These are all very cool contributions - I haven't had a chance to play them yet, but I will soon!

Eventually, I will also add them to the Game list here too if that's okay!: https://learn.tinycircuits.com/Kits/Tiny-Arcade-All-Games/

Let me know if you make any updates to the games on the forum, so I can be sure to keep the website up to date as well!

Best,
Réna

208

General Discussion / Re: Problems writing to Flash memory

« on: October 05, 2021, 04:51:44 PM »

Hello,

I just tested the Flash example program with a TinyScreen+ and had no issue writing and reading the byte value of 8. Can you tell me what hardware you used?

Best,
Réna

209

Thumby / Re: 'Mazogs' game scaled for Thumby Screen

« on: October 04, 2021, 06:37:36 PM »

This looks awesome! Excited to see what it would look like on a Thumby screen!

210

General Discussion / Re: Battery Connector

« on: September 29, 2021, 05:13:03 PM »

Here are some example product pages for the type of battery connector and mating connector (both 1mm):

Battery connector: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/jst-sales-america-inc/SHR-02V-S-B/759866
Mating connector: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/jst-sales-america-inc/SM02B-SRSS-TB-LF-SN/926708