1/23/2026 - What are we making?

I want to make a small, handeld retroconsole, like the Arduboy, but somewhat beefier and able to play titles for the GameBoy.
I want to try to order the SMD components from LCSC this time, and reflow solder it myself.
I chose the esp32 as MCU for this, since it's really cheap, easily solderable, and the WROOM modules have the antenna and PSRAM/FLASH design built-in.
The N32R16 is the beefiest one, with octal-SPI for the 32 MB flash and 16 MB PSRAM.
Since it's not readily available on LCSC, I went with the N16R8, a bunch less powerful, but still most likely overkill for my purpose.
Wired it as such after reading the datasheet:

Then I went scouting for a TFT screen, found the HS24S010B for pretty cheap, altough the datasheet is in chinese and pins are somehow scrambled.
After a few hours of back-and-forth looking at the datasheet and pics I managed to get a coherent pinout for that and added it into my schem:

I also added the USB-C connector, I chose the one with the least pins, that still could provide sufficient data pins:

I'm now looking for buttons, and I might have found some nice small smd low-profile ones, but that's for next time.

1/25/2026 - More components!

Backjournaling a bit here.
Found these nice and cheap soft tactile buttons on LCSC: EVQQ2B03W
I don't like those hard smd buttons that much, they get tiring and the click isn't great.
These are soft, with s small actuation force, and should be a bit more silent than the famous ones.

Wired them to the ESP32 wroom, and added 2 control ones.

Next, I moved on to the buck/boost converter, I chose the known TPS63020DSJR
Wired it like this, and added a transistor(Q1) to be able to toggle power save mode

I also added a way to control the backlight brightness on the LCD, added a S8050 along with a PWM pin from the ESP to be able to control it without risking burning out my WROOM

Now, all is left is to add a BMS, an audio controller, and a way to sense batt percentage.

1/28/2026 - Battery-maxxing

I added a BMS ic to the board, I found the BQ24075RGTR, is pretty known and can charge up to 1.5A.

Made it charge @ 800mA (R14), and up to 1.3A(R15) when the console is actively sipping energy whilst charging.

You may wonder what VBAT_SHUNT is, and that is there because I also added a fuel-gauge IC, to get a really accurate reading of the current batt percentage.
I used the BQ27441DRZT-G1A

I also added a 1W-rated shunt resistor, although pretty overkill
Almost finished with the schematic, just need a DAC for audio

1/31/2026 - Cleaned up the schematic + added SD, DAC and AMP

I cleaned the schematic up a bit, split it into some different pages and added some titles.



You may notice the SD-card, DAC and the link cable
I wired the SD to the SPI, figured SDMMC used too many pins and didnt give any significant savings.
I added an I2S DAC+AMP to be able to use a small external speaker, wasn't too hard to wire, altough I had to touch some troublesome pins, which are used at boot, so I had to be careful.
I added an header on the UART0 default pins, and gnd, to make use of the last 2 pins remaining and to get an external header for debug/multiplayer.
I now have 0 spare esp32 pins, just gotta route them on the PCB.