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Arduino Gameboy Printer Emulator (V3)

CI

Telegram Gameboy Camera Chatroom

Got telegram instant messaging and have some questions or need any advice, or just want to share? Invite link below:

https://t.me/gameboycamera

Media Coverage And Other Projects Spinoff

There is more examples located in our showcase page page, but below is a few actively used cases:

Featured On Hack A Day Article

WestM's Arduino Gameboy Printer Emulator Tutorial

Rafael Zenaro: NeoGB Printer

Click For More Examples In Our Showcase Page

What is a Gameboy Camera?

The Game Boy Camera (GBC), released as Pocket Camera[a] in Japan, is a Nintendo accessory for the handheld Game Boy game console

Game Boy Camera commercial, 1998

About this project

Code to emulate a gameboy printer via the gameboy link cable and an arduino module.

Goal is to provide an easy way for people to quickly setup and download the images from their gameboy to their computer before the battery of these gameboy cameras dies of old age.

I hope there will be a project to collate these gameboy images somewhere.

Official Releases

Downloads: Version Release Downloads at GitHub

Release Notes Located Here

Quick Start

Construct the Arduino Gameboy Printer Emulator

Use an arduino Nano/Uno and wire the gameboy link cable according to the pinout shown below.

Pure GBA cables (purple ones) have a different pinout from GB/GBC, avoid using them. In general, do not destroy old genuine gameboy link cables for this purpose, there is plenty new cables you can purchase online. Do note that you cannot trust the color code of these cables, you must always check the wire against the plug pins. Especially considering the RX/TX pair of the pins may be flipped.

Else if you have a 3D printer, you can use (Game Boy DMG-01 Link Port plug for dupont jumper wire by Marko Štamcar from Slovenian Computer Museum, created as part of a retro tech exhibition)[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4685189]

Pinout Diagram

Thanks to West McGowan (twitter: @imwestm) who was able to replicate this project on his Arduino Nano plus Gameboy Color and helpfully submitted a handy picture of how to wire this project up. You can find his tutorial in here

General Pinout

Gameboy Original/Color Link Cable Pinout
 ___________
|  6  4  2  |
 \_5__3__1_/   (at cable)
Arduino Pin Gameboy Link Pin
unused Pin 1 : 5.0V
D4 Pin 2 : Serial OUTPUT
D3 Pin 3 : Serial INPUT
unused Pin 4 : Serial Data
D2 Pin 5 : Serial Clock (Interrupt)
GND Pin 6 : GND (Attach to GND Pin)

Dedicated PCB

As crossing Serial OUTPUT and Serial INPUT is the main cause of issues with the project, dedicated PCBs were made to fit with the Arduino Nano and Uno, using a GBA/GBC socket. This also allows not cutting a cable. The Uno version comes with pins dedicated for an SD shield that you can just left empty for this project.

Programming the emulator

  • Arduino Project File: ./GameBoyPrinterEmulator/gpb_emulator.ino
  • Baud 115200 baud

Next download ./GameBoyPrinterEmulator/gpb_emulator.ino to your arduino nano. After that, open the serial console and set the baud rate to 115200 baud.

Alternative option of uploading precompiled arduino nano image via WebUSB

If your browser supports webusb, you have the option of uploading directly to the arduino nano the firmware using WebUSB (e.g. via google chrome)

Afterwards, you can check if it's working via the webusb serial console below as well

Download the image (Javascript)

The Arduino IDE 2.XX does not allow to batch copy/paste the serial output anymore. You have to follow this guide to configure PuTTy or another serial datalogger. Once connected to your Arduino serial with PuTTY, print from your gameboy, then close the serial monitor and copy/paste data from the log file to the raw packet javascript decoder in ./GameBoyPrinterDecoderJS/gameboy_printer_js_raw_decoder.html. Press click to render button.

One you done that, your image will show up below. You can then right click on the image to save it to your computer. Or you can click upload to imgur to upload it to the web in public, so you can share it. (Feel free to share with me at mofosyne@gmail.com).

A copy of the raw decoder is accessible here as well:

Need example raw packet captures to test out the raw js decoder without the gameboy printer emulator hardware? You can check a few out in the Real Packet Capture Example folder of the gameboy printer sniffer project.

You are all done!

Note: V3 now uses raw packet decoder, rather than the original tile decoder. This allows us to better support gameboy printers enabled games using compression.

Download via Game Boy Printer Web (External Project)

For those who want to take the next step and take more photos regularly you may want to look at a partner project by Herrzatcke. Herrzatcke created a photo manager dedicated for gameboy cameras and have already integrated support for this project so you can easily upload photos via WebUSB or by copying and pasting raw packet data.

Enter Game Boy Printer Web

Download via Android app and use the Arduino as a generic output interface for the Game Boy Printer (External Project)

For those who want to use an Android to download photos in the field, you may want to consider this partner project by Mraulio. Mraulio created an Android app to manage a Game Boy Camera gallery and communicate via usb serial with Arduino Printer Emulator and GBxCart to get images. Additionaly, when booting the Arduino board connected with the serial cable to a Game Boy Printer switched ON, the device will boot in printer mode and allow you to output images from the Android App to the printer with the exact same wire configuration. In this mode, the LED connected to pin 13 will flash ON to indicate that the printer is ready.

Enter GBCamera Android Manager

Download the image (C) (Advance User)

For advance users, in the GameBoyPrinterDecoderC folder there is a PC based commandline program that when compiled would allow for decoding raw packet captures into bitmap.

Gameboy Printer Decoder C Readme

Project Makeup

  • Arduino sketch emulating a gameboy printer to a computer via a serial link.

    • ./GameBoyPrinterEmulator/gpb_emulator.ino : Main source file
    • ./GameBoyPrinterEmulator/gameboy_printer_protocol.h : Reusable header containing information about the gameboy protocol
    • The serial output is outputting a gameboy tile per line filled with hex. (Based on http://www.huderlem.com/demos/gameboy2bpp.html) Only if in tile output mode.
    • If set to tile mode, then a tile in the serial output is 16 hex char per line: e.g. 55 00 FB 00 5D 00 FF 00 55 00 FF 00 55 00 FF 00
    • If set to raw mode, it will output the raw packet in hex, where last two bytes of each packet is the printer's response: e.g. 88 33 01 00 00 00 01 00 81 00

  • Javascript gameboy printer hex encoded packets stream rendering to image in browser.

    • js decoder page
    • ./GameBoyPrinterDecoderJS/gameboy_printer_js_raw_decoder.html :
    • This is a more complicated but standard compliant way to convert the packet hex payload into canvas image that can be downloaded.

  • Javascript gameboy printer hex tiles stream rendering to image in browser.

    • js decoder page
    • ./GameBoyPrinterDecoderJS/gameboy_printer_js_decoder.html :
    • This is a convenient way to convert the hex payload into canvas image that can be downloaded.

  • Research folder.

  • Sample Images

    • Some sample images along with the sample logs. There has been some changes to the serial output, but the hex format remains the same.

  • showcase

    • Example of what other people has used this project for.

Technical Information

Sniffer / Real Gameboy Printer Captures

Refer to https://github.com/mofosyne/GameboyPrinterSniffer for more information.

Protocol

  | BYTE POS :    |     0     |     1     |     2     |      3      |     4     |     5     |  6 + X    | 6 + X + 1 | 6 + X + 2 | 6 + X + 3 | 6 + X + 4 |
  |---------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|
  | SIZE          |        2 Bytes        |  1 Byte   |   1 Byte    |  1 Bytes  |  1 Bytes  | Variable  |        2 Bytes        |  1 Bytes  |  1 Bytes  |
  | DESCRIPTION   |       SYNC_WORD       | COMMAND   | COMPRESSION |     DATA_LENGTH(X)    | Payload   |       CHECKSUM        |  DEVICEID |  STATUS   |
  | GB TO PRINTER |    0x88   |    0x33   | See Below | See Below   | Low Byte  | High Byte | See Below |       See Below       |    0x00   |    0x00   |
  | TO PRINTER    |    0x00   |    0x00   |    0x00   |   0x00      |    0x00   |    0x00   |    0x00   |    0x00   |    0x00   |    0x81   | See Below |
  • Header is the Command, Compression and Data Length
  • Command field may be either Initialize (0x01), Data (0x04), Print (0x02), or Inquiry (0x0F).
  • Compression field is a compression indicator. No compression (0x00), Yes Compression (0x01)
  • Payload byte count size depends on the value of the DATA_LENGTH field.
  • Checksum is 2 bytes of data representing the sum of the header + all data in the data portion of the packet
  • Status byte is a bitfield byte indicating various status of the printer itself. (e.g. If it is still printing)

Gameboy Printer Timing

Below measurements was obtained via the ANALOG DISCOVERY via digilent

                       1.153ms
        <--------------------------------------->
         0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7             0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7
     __   _   _   _   _   _   _   _   ___________   _   _   _   _   _   _   _   _
CLK:   |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_|           |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_|
DAT: ___XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX____________XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_
       <-->                           <---------->
       127.63 us                         229.26 us
  • Clock Frequency: 8kHz (127.63 us)
  • Transmission Speed: 867 baud (1.153ms per 8bit symbol)
  • Between Symbol Period: 229.26 us

Research/Dev log

2022-04-20

  • V3.2.1 includes WebUSB firmware flasher for ease of loading into an arduino nano
  • Also adjusted firmware messaging to reduce confusion regarding timeout

2021-01-26

  • V3 enable raw only mode to take advantage of better decompression on PC side
  • Updated and added a showcase folder

2020-08-30

2017-11-30

  • Time to wrap this up. I have pushed the arduino to it's maxium ability. The show stopper to futher dev is the puny ram.
  • Still cannot get CRC working. But don't really care anymore. Since its taking too much time to debug crc. Works good enough.
  • There is not enough time/ram to actually do much processing of the image in the arduino. Instead the image data has to be transferred raw to over serial at 115200baud via hex, and processed futher in the computer.

2017-4-12

  • Checksum works for init, inqiry, but not data, and possibly inqury. Possibly messed up the summation somehow. But I found that this may not matter, as the gameboy camera doesn't seem to check for it.
  • While checksum worked for short messages, the checksum system didn't work for the normal data bytes. But... it seems that the gameboy printer doesn't actually pay attention to the checksum bit.
  • Investigation with http://www.huderlem.com/demos/gameboy2bpp.html shows that this is actually encoded as "16 byte standard gameboy tile format".
  • According to http://furrtek.free.fr/?a=gbprinter&i=2 the The GameBoy Camera buffers tile data by blocs of 2 20 tiles wide lines..

My Face In BW

Credits / Other Resources

Resources Referenced

Contributors / Thanks

  • @BjornB2 : For adding improvements in downloading images for jsdecoder folder mofosyne#15 For adding color palette dropdown mofosyne#18

  • @virtuaCode : For helping to fix rendering issues with the jsdecoder mofosyne#9

  • @HerrZatacke : For adding the feature to render a separate image for each received image in jsdecoder mofosyne#19 as well as adding web USB support

  • @imwestm : West McGowan for submitting a handy picture of how to wire this project up as well as feedback to improve the instructions in this readme.

  • Raphaël BOICHOT : For assistance with capturing gameboy communications and timing for support with gameboy printer fast mode and compression. Assisting in the support of more games. Also contributed a matlab/octave decoder implementation.

  • @crizzlycruz (@23kpixels) : For adding support to js decoder for zero margin multi prints

  • @markostamcar : For contributing a 3D printed plug so users can construct a cable without sacrifing a gameboy link cable.

  • @tikonen: For contributing python decoder.