As a few of you are aware my day job is the Electronics Production Manager at Pimoroni in Sheffield.Pimoroni is a collection of Pirates, Makers and engineers who design and manufacture electronics and laser-cut accessories for the educational, maker communities and anyone who wants to get into electronics and physical computing.
On Friday (31/07/15) we finally released the retail version of Picade with was officially the UK's first Kickstarted project and raising over £74000 more than twice its pledge amount. The backers orders were shipped and all went quiet of quite a while. At this point there was lots of behind the scenes development as well as a move to a larger workshop that put the project on the back-burner for a while.
So back to my story:
So Saturday (01/08/15) I had left my car at work, I arrived at the workshop to find the guys beavering away like mad making up the Picade kits. That was it, bribed with a (very tasty) Baked Potato I was off to manufacture as many of the Picade PCBs as possible.
It was a hard slog of a day but we now have enough boards to start fulfilling orders on monday.
Phil Howard (known to many as @gadgetiod) on of my colleagues, fellow maker and friend had done a Periscope video of the day answering question showing some of the production process. unfortunately just want to link it in and the broadcast had expired. :(
I'll see if I can persuade him to upload it to Youtube and link it in later.
The Picade has been released in several variants. The full version that comes with an 8 inch display panel, there are also versions which you can add your own display, the Adruino compatible controller with amp and the brand now Picade Console.
The Picade Console a very nice stripped-down controller panel with space to house a Raspberry Pi and hook direct to a TV or monitor via HDMI.
Hopefully these systems will satisfy a lot of retro gamers looking for and quality arcade feel, and i can't wait to see what hacks come from it.
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