 |
 |
 |
 |
Pocket AMOLED playground for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.8: a tiny app engine (touch launcher, double-buffered DMA renderer, sound mixer with MP3, storage, Wi-Fi/BLE), a Commodore-64-style machine you program in BASIC, plus a growing pile of experiments. Modern C++.
| Part | Role |
|---|---|
| ESP32-S3R8 | 240 MHz, 8 MB octal PSRAM, 16 MB flash, Wi-Fi 4 + BLE 5 |
| SH8601 | 1.8" AMOLED, 368 × 448, QSPI |
| FT3168 | capacitive touch |
| QMI8658 | 6-axis IMU (gyro + accelerometer) |
| ES8311 | mono audio codec + on-board speaker + MEMS microphone |
| AXP2101 | power management, LiPo charging + battery telemetry |
| PCF85063 | RTC with backup-battery pads |
| TCA9554 | 8-bit I/O expander (drives LCD / TP reset internally) |
Product page: https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-touch-amoled-1.8.htm
Boots into a touch launcher. The first screen holds the two headline apps — Ghost BASIC and Outer Pixels — with everything else behind Others.
Ghost BASIC — a Commodore-64-style computer you program in BASIC. Outer Pixels — Outer-Wilds-style space sim: fly between orbiting planets and drop onto a voxel surface.
Others: BLE Scan (find and pair a Bluetooth keyboard), Disk (storage info + format), Cube 3D (IMU wireframe), Sensor Lab (hardware dashboard), Echo (mic → speaker), Piano (touch synth), Sand (falling sand + tilt), Maze Ball, Level (spirit level), Music (MP3 from flash & SD), WiFi Scan, Pad Lab (Xbox controller over BLE, incl. rumble).
Tap to launch — BOOT key or a swipe from the top edge goes back, the PWR key cycles brightness.
A Commodore 64 in spirit, not an emulator: a 40 × 25 PETSCII screen with its own hand-drawn 8 × 8 font, the authentic screen editor (cursor up to an old line, change it, press RETURN and it is re-entered), and a BASIC V2-flavoured interpreter down to the original error messages. Type on a Bluetooth-LE keyboard, or on the USB serial console when none is paired.
Language reference and example programs: docs/GHOST_BASIC.md.
The headline app: an Outer-Wilds-style space sim (no 3D engine). Fly a 6-DOF ship between orbiting planets with the Xbox pad; drop low and it switches to a Comanche-style voxel terrain you fly through — procedural, generated in the background so it's seamless.
Without a pad, hold a finger on the screen and drag to steer: holding is also
the throttle, and lifting the finger brakes the ship to a stop. The bottom-left
corner picks the planet under the crosshair, or launches again once landed. A
keyboard works too — arrows steer, Q/E roll, W/S thrust and brake,
A picks, Y toggles the orbit lines, B leaves a surface.
Requires PlatformIO.
pio run -t upload # build + flash
pio run -t uploadfs # flash the data/ folder (assets, mp3s)
pio device monitor # serial @ 115200 — doubles as Ghost BASIC's keyboard
./test/ghost_basic/run.sh # BASIC, screen, VIC-II and SID, on the host
./test/outer_pixels/run.sh # orbits, flight model and terrain, on the hostsrc/
main.cpp # composition root: board init + app registration
core/ # engine: App interface, manager, menu, files, keyboard, sound
apps/ # one file pair per experiment
ghost_basic/ # the machine: screen, editor, BASIC, font, VIC-II, SID
outer_pixels/ # bodies, ship, terrain, both renderers
board/ # hardware modules (display, imu, touch, audio, storage, ...)
data/ # assets packed into LittleFS
docs/ # developer guide + Ghost BASIC manual
test/ # host-side suites (no hardware needed) + shared stubs
The bigger apps keep their internals in a folder beside the shell, and those
folders depend on nothing from core:: — only on board::gfx::Surface. A
handful of stubs in test/hostshim/ stand in for it, so the interpreter, the
orbits, the flight model and the renderers all build and run on a PC in about
a second.
Files live under /GHOST on the SD card, or on internal flash when no card is
present — core::files picks one and every app shares the layout:
/GHOST/BASIC BASIC programs (SAVE / LOAD / DIRECTORY)
/GHOST/DATA app data
/GHOST/SYS settings, e.g. the paired keyboard
/GHOST/APPS one folder per app
How to write an app, the engine APIs, code examples for sound/MP3, sprites, storage, Wi-Fi/BLE, buttons, configuration and performance — all in the Developer Guide.
Programming the machine itself: Ghost BASIC manual.
Sandbox repo. Things change, demos get replaced, APIs are not stable.