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 typically be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location conne ...

produced by TinyCircuits of

Akron, Ohio Akron () is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Ohio, fifth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 190,469 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Akron metr ...

and funded by a

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

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, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...

Maker Faire Maker Faire is a convention of do it yourself (DIY) enthusiasts established 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. Hist ...

. 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, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

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. 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. ''

The Verge ''The Verge'' is an American Technology journalism, technology news website headquarters, headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, cons ...

'' reported on a follow-up Thumby Color console Kickstarter in August 2024. Listed improvements include a color display, improved processor, and a haptic feedback motor.

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, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

Hardware

The Thumby is powered by a Raspberry Pi

RP2040 RP2040 is a 32-bit computing, 32-bit multi-core processor, dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller designed by Raspberry Pi Foundation, Raspberry Pi Ltd. In January 2021, it was released as part of the Raspberry Pi#Raspberry Pi Pico, Raspberry ...

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 o ...

is supported with a web based

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 72×40 pixel 1-bit

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

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 high life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of the USB ...

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 derived from lithium-ion and lithium-metal battery technology. The primary differ ...

, 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 keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys, or fobs can be attached. The terms keyring and keychain are often used interchangeably to mean both the individual ring, or a combined unit of a ring and fob ...

. 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