The Thumby is a small keychain-sized programmable

game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...

produced by TinyCircuits of

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...

and funded by a

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

campaign. The console measures .

History

The first concept for the Thumby originated roughly around 2015 or 2016. An early version of the system was shown at the 2016

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

Maker Faire Maker Faire is a convention of do it yourself aka-DIY enthusiasts started by ''Make'' magazine in 2006. Participants come from a wide variety of interests, such as robotics, 3D printing, computers, arts and crafts, and hacker culture. History ...

. A

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

campaign to raise money for the console began on September 28, 2021. The company projected a production of at least 10,000 Thumby consoles despite the

2020–present global chip shortage The 2020–present global chip shortage is an ongoing global crisis in which the demand for integrated circuits (commonly known as semiconductor chips) exceeds the supply, affecting more than 169 industries. The crisis has led to major price inc ...

. A stated goal was to ship consoles to backers by February 2022, with plans to ship some early units in Fall 2021. The console shipped in 2022.

Games

The Thumby includes six preloaded games: * TinySaur/Saur Run * Thumgeon * TinyTennis/Tennis * Annelid * Space Debris * TinyBlocks/TinyTris Additional games can be downloaded from the internet on a personal computer, then loaded onto the console over

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

Hardware

The Thumby is powered by a Raspberry Pi

RP2040 The RP2040 is a 32-bit dual ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller integrated circuit by Raspberry Pi Ltd (was Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd). At the same time, it was released as part of the Raspberry Pi Pico board. Overview Announced on 21st January 202 ...

microcontroller. The console provides 2MB of onboard storage.

MicroPython MicroPython is a software implementation of a programming language largely compatible with Python 3, written in C, that is optimized to run on a microcontroller. MicroPython consists of a Python compiler to bytecode and a runtime interpreter of ...

is supported with a

web based A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

development environment In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same m ...

. A small 72x40 pixel 1-bit

OLED An organic light-emitting diode (OLED or organic LED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light i ...

panel is used as the display. A buzzer is also included for simple audio feedback. A

microUSB The initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of t ...

port is used to connect the console with computers, as well as to support the Thumby link cable. This port is also used to charge the

lithium polymer battery A lithium polymer battery, or more correctly lithium-ion polymer battery (abbreviated as LiPo, LIP, Li-poly, lithium-poly and others), is a rechargeable battery of lithium-ion technology using a polymer electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyt ...

, which provides about 2 hours of operational runtime with a capacity of 40 mAh. The system is notable for its small size, measuring at . The console can be mounted on a

keychain A keychain (also key fob or keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys can be attached. The length of a keychain allows an item to be used more easily than if connected directly to a keyring. Some keychains allow one or bo ...

. The system has a mass of . The console casing was made in a variety of colors including gray, dark gray, blue, pink, gold, green, and clear.

References

External links

*
Thumby Code EditorMicro Python API
{{Handheld game consoles Handheld game consoles Kickstarter-funded video game consoles ARM-based video game consoles Akron, Ohio 2020s toys 2022 in video gaming Products introduced in 2022 Monochrome video game consoles