Tiny ESP32-Based Nintendo-Themed Xmas Ornament

Apparently, we live in a golden age of hobby electronics where a number of projects can materialize from the comfort of one’s home with free tools and relatively cheap parts. Hence, maker “scottbez1” built a miniaturized Christmassy Nintendo Switch that plays animated GIFs from an SD card on a tiny 1.14” LCD display, with the power of ESP32 (pictured below).

As the Hackaday writer, Dave Rowntree, notes: “Obviously such a diminutive hack requires a custom PCB, which was a job for KiCAD. Armed with a 3D model of the LCD, the casing and PCB outline were drawn using Fusion 360. The PCB hosts an ESP32 module for all the heavy lifting, with the Wi-Fi adding some fun future capabilities not yet explored. The design is about as tight as it can get without pushing the limits of the PCB process too far, including a neat trick of sneaking passives inside the body of the SD card! That’s another space-saving idea we’ll be banking. All-in-all, a neat little hack showing some good modelling and construction techniques, and a good-looking end result.”

Readers can find the code for this project on scottbez1’s GitHub webpage, and they can also watch a YouTube video demonstrating the entire process of creating this project.