Episode: 2701
Title: HPR2701: First impressions of the Odroid-go
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2701/hpr2701.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:43:19

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This is HBR episode 2,701 entitled First Impression of the Odoid Go and is part of the series
Hobby Electronics.
It is hosted by the ODD Dummy and is about 32 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, I rumble on about my first impression of the Odoid Go, today's show is
licensed under a CC hero license.
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Hello, this is D.O.D.D. dummy with today's episode for Hacker Public Radio.
This is just a little first impression slash review of a device I got and I just got it
in the middle yesterday or maybe the day before and I thought I would just give it a quick
quick review of my opinion of it and it's called the old joy go and the reason that I
used the old joy C1 before and I liked it, I used the Cody box for a long time and then
I think it's doing duty in the Philippines somewhere and I saw that they had this and I've
got it for a while, a Game Boy size kind of thing for emulators and I actually I have
like I've got it in India so I have emulators on but I still wanted kind of this, I don't
know the whole new Linux deal and I saw this and it was $32 and I thought well all right
I don't remember how much tipping was now but tipping wasn't enough that I thought oh that's
too much so it looks not a bad thing, maybe 10 bucks off in the tip, I don't know if you
remember but I was pretty sure if tipping was $20 I would have not gotten it, but anyway
I didn't really look at the specs when I got it and I just thought I was indulated and
this is it wouldn't be bad in my mind, it's inside where it's more private and I actually
I think there's probably some people who have bought similar things and show the battery
but it's good enough that it runs, so right now it runs NES emulator, sorry $7,200, $600, Spectrum,
run to Doom, and it runs Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, SMS, it seems like I'm forgetting
why but oh clinical baking, and it runs out pretty well actually, sounds nice and slow
every once in a while I see I feel some kind of a slow down but I remember correctly
pick a truck that in some of the activities but it's actually pretty easy to come in, I'm
kind of expressing for those classic, now what I didn't see, that was a little disappointed,
I mean it's my fault because I didn't really read much about it, I was hoping it wouldn't
have made, but I don't see it, I had a maintenance later on here yet, but that could be
that just nobody supported it, and my suspicion is it should run main, should be
able to, or spec wise, but maybe not, you know, maybe only some of the more simple games,
which is fine, those are the games that pretty much want to play anyway,
probably are our asteroids and those kind of classic, but the arcade version rather than
the console, and the consoles I like, anyway, this here was put out in, they're calling
the 10th anniversary old jewelry, so it's in commemoration of the 10th anniversary,
and then it comes in kit form, but it's a pretty simple kit to put together,
having said that, I will kind of, and what you get in the box, you get everything you need,
you get a looking eye on battery, you get a speaker, a speaker looks pretty well,
you get, it's two buttons, A and B, two game buttons, and then there's,
or other buttons, there's a volume button, and you button on a mini flashback button,
maybe, I select it in a start, and then A and B, there's no shoulder buttons,
or it does have four buttons, so you will be limited to button games,
which kind of makes sense, because like I said, the specs are pretty low,
I actually think it's at 80 more, 80 megahertz, only megahertz in it,
so it's adaptable, I think, but so you get, like I said,
you get everything you need to put this together, and the only thing that's missing is
micro SD card, which you need to prod, reply, and you have to download software
from the old joy, well, or other sites, and so, and it's built to put it together,
now, you might, well, you might have heard me in the past complaint about
every time I take a device apart, I break something, I didn't break anything with this,
and I mean, part of that is because now I'm used to knowing how,
most of the little classic things work, so I don't press them too hard,
but it really is, like in ribbon cables, I, a lot of times I have tough time getting
a ribbon cable in there, because it seems like they're just don't want to fit right,
and this one, like I said, was built for people to put together,
people who are not in small, Chinese women, with tiny hands,
so big, soft, each finger is like me to put this together.
And having said that, there's two things, I watched a couple of different videos
on putting this together, one of them I watched was enough,
and then I watched the other one just because I was on YouTube,
and you put all the play on, so the next one came up.
And in both of these videos, they did something to play,
I think it was better, some of it, and one that was not.
So for starters, with a couple of things in that one,
all of the screws are the same size, which I like,
so you don't have to worry about putting the wrong screw in the wrong place.
I had double the number of screws that I needed, which is kind of nice.
It's kind of like seven, eight, nine screws somewhere in there.
And one of the guys pointed out that there's a screw in between the battery
and the speaker get their power pretty close together,
and in between them there's a screw in between that.
So one of the guys said, he noticed, I didn't notice myself,
he said, he noticed some people were missing that screw,
so I thought I'd point that out.
I might have missed it, but I heard him say that,
so I didn't have a chance to miss it.
Okay, so the one thing that I think you should probably do first is
put on the screen color, I don't know what's the right word,
but it's not the screen of the actual LED screen,
but the screen's the outside cover.
Put that on first in my recommendation.
So that way it's, well, I just recommend putting that on first.
The second thing that I recommend is screw the,
at least put through screws on the mainboard,
or you try to test the ribbon cable.
So you can put the screen in and leave the ribbon cable out,
the mainboard has a nice thick space for it.
And what this will do, this will call the mainboard in place.
And then you can pretty easily put the ribbon cable in.
So I maybe both of them, no, I think one of them had this issue.
And one of them tried to attach the ribbon cable for the screen
before you had the mainboard secure.
And so it was a little bit tricky doing that way,
because then you had to, you know,
think about screwing the other cuts around a little bit.
The other guy, he screwed it in first.
I think he might screw it all in,
but I just figured two screws would be enough to hold it.
And then you could put that in.
And the screen itself, in the screen that's got those plastic,
there's a black bar, it slides, it slides out,
it does not the kind of goes out, but it slides out.
And I don't, I doubt you'll have much trouble putting the ribbon cable in,
I did it and I need to have trouble with it.
It was a little bit tricky, but not really,
routing the speaker in the battered cables around the pole pole stair,
but you should figure that out, it's not too bad.
And it suddenly took me even with watching,
or the other thing that's nice about this,
is you know the slide button on the side,
you can have one of those, you know on some devices,
it's hard to get that stupid thing in a situated correctly.
And sometimes you end up breaking off,
broken off even the slider,
the bar didn't slide,
but this is built nice,
where it just kind of goes in, and it's pretty easy.
So the top plate has a space board,
so anyway, they should all be designed like that.
But it took me about 30, less than 30 minutes,
and that's what me watching a video a couple times,
like a 10 minute, I don't know why the video was 10 minutes.
Oh yeah, I think you could talk about it.
So that's the pretty, and what I did was I left the,
of the outside screen,
the external screen protection thing.
It has one of those temporary protection plastics on it,
which I use to remove those in this case.
I loved it on because I can't see it,
so I had left that on.
And so that's the,
that's the putting it together.
You know, I'll talk about what it comes with,
the softening.
And the screen is not too bad,
I think it's 2.4 inches.
It's all one device,
when I was putting it together,
I've left a couple of other reviews.
Like I said, we're on all the plates.
There's another device,
the hardware, it's, I think of 20 bucks.
The hardware was better,
at least the screen in the case seemed to be a little bit better.
Oh, this isn't bad,
but the screen on that one was 3 inches.
So I thought if I liked this,
maybe that'll be my next,
I might wait to see a hack of it,
because I'm pretty sure someone will hack that,
and put something else in it.
So I could see, you know,
marrying that thing with the Raspberry Pi mini,
assuming that the ribbon cables
can be made to work.
But the screen's not too bad.
It's any smaller,
and I think it's too much for my little eyes,
or my old eyes.
So it comes with,
and I don't like exactly the way the software is right now,
but that could change.
It comes with six or seven emulators,
and they're all on like one menu.
What I don't like about it is,
you know, there's some other,
some other emulators to it,
but it doesn't seem to be,
well, there doesn't seem to be a way yet,
where you can just add those emulators
that seem to be,
so what you have to do is,
you have to,
you put the emulator on,
and then whenever you boot up,
you have to,
you gotta flash the emulator,
so when you boot up,
press B,
and you hold the B button down,
when you power it on,
and then,
if you boot that way,
then it gives you,
kind of like a multi-boot menu,
and then you select which one,
so like, for example,
this has,
let's put Doom on it,
and I do not on the,
the menu that comes with it,
so you put the,
you know, you get most of these
in your firmware,
possibly,
and then,
not have,
you,
and then,
so you select that firmware,
and it's gotta go through,
a,
a flash process,
and that actually takes a little bit of time,
you know,
20 years ago,
I wouldn't have thought it was much time,
but,
but not much time to do.
And then,
even worse than the,
and the same thing goes for the Atari 2600,
the Atari 7200,
in the Spectrum,
and I think a couple others,
those are,
well, you have to boot in that way.
Now, the vast part is,
if you wanna go back to,
the,
the,
the emulator that I installed,
and,
yes,
gameboy,
and then,
you have to do the same thing,
and it takes longer
to load that firmware.
I think that firmware loads takes,
like,
what you actually learn that mobile is.
I think that mobile is that,
when you,
when you,
when you,
when you Flash it,
like,
you know,
I think only on that one,
I think the other one's also doing that,
but maybe they're doing it just so fast that they're no,
but it goes through,
like three cycles,
it's the second crucified,
and in it,
it gets two-step,
So that is kind of, now I'm hoping that, I mean, this is early day, so I'm hoping that
something that you'll figure out how to either come up with the phone menus that, you
know, somebody else's own home group menu that includes the emulators that are, you
saw my e-pops, plus the other ones, or, well, I don't know, it could be also maybe the
size thing, maybe this is somehow maybe all this has to go in from now on in the case
and that's the possible, I don't know how that works, but even that's not so bad.
Now what I did find on here so far is, for the arcade experience, the one that I want
to be like New York City, like Gallagher, for example, it's 7800 emulators that are on here
so far.
Now, it is so, because I typically like the arcade games, and it could be that the ones
that I was introduced, but I have some games that I think are arcade games, and I have
something that I think are complicated, so for example, to me, Super Mario Bros. even
though that was definitely an arcade game, to me, it's a console game, because that's
really what I've got used to in my asteroids on the other hand, is it's an arcade game.
So for asteroids, that's what I like is actual games.
But the same thing goes for Gallagher, I like Gallagher, I haven't seen the course on here
yet, but to me, Gorge is an arcade game, so I like to play Gorge on a main, but not on one
console.
So I'm hoping that there's a main emulator comes to this, at least for some of the more simple games.
I mean, this is having the power to play some more complicated games.
It probably is fine for the games that came out in the 70s, maybe early games, but I don't
think it would be much more than that.
In the way this screen is, some of those wouldn't be as good as it either, because I think
some of the bullets, the missile on some games would be too small for me to see.
So that's also the aspect ratio.
I don't like that at all, and if I could turn the sideways, that would be fine.
The button layout is not ideal for that, because it's not poor, but you couldn't remap in
the title.
I could probably get used to it, but it wouldn't be ideal.
I haven't found a way yet to remap these buttons.
I think so far it looks like at least at this point in time.
Your stuff with the A button being the A button and the B button being the B button.
Oh yeah, you couldn't.
But yeah, I would say that this is pretty, this is what the money I would definitely say
that.
I don't know if it's the best one, because I haven't really tried these things out, and I would say
that.
Now the handheld system that I use, like to use them all, is a Nintendo 3DS, I think.
Oh no, Nintendo DSI DX, so like one of the big DSIs, because that's the other thing I
like at the fur of the bigger handheld system, this one's almost too small actually.
It's almost good to me, but it's not too small, but it's much smaller and I wouldn't be
comfortable to me.
But this fits them in a shirt pocket, so that's kind of nice.
Like I said, it's not too small, it's almost too small.
So yeah, if you're looking for the, you know, this, I, there's no way this would emulate
like an N64 or PlayStation 1, it's not that.
And I doubt I would be even surprised if it could emulate the SNES, but it doesn't, it doesn't
pretty good, but I played some Metroid on it, that was pretty good, pretty fun.
But I think, like I said, this I thought was worth the price, but I think if I was going
to get into where I really wanted a handheld device or games, I think I would get something
similar to this, but get one with at least four buttons, maybe shoulder buttons, but the
takes are bigger, and I would probably go with a bigger footprint and a bigger screen, and
maybe an actual Singapore computer.
But, but I do think this is different from what I'm having, and it's a good piece of
device, and this might be, I was going to say, it might be fine for kids.
The only thing I don't know about the kids, and I guess, I guess all kids are different, but the,
I would almost prefer, if I were going to give this to younger kids, the SD card was, you
had to open a cover or something to change an SD card, because this SD card is kind of exposed, so I'm
thinking, dirty, grimy, greasy, syrup, and stuff like that, but maybe I'm just paranoid, and kids
are used to devices now, and that's not a problem, but yeah, I think, what this definitely
did for me is it showed me that these devices can be decent, and so I think, and I got my
currently, as you guys might know by now, if you don't just automatically delete my
shows, most of my hardware, actually, just about all of it, I buy second-hand, and so these days,
I have probably 7 to 10 Nintendo DS, either DS Lite, DSi, DS Lite or DSi, that I got for
between $3 and $4, and actually on the 2D X's that I got, I have two of those, I paid $15 for
one, and the other one I paid $25 for, but the one I paid $25 for came with the Flash
Card 2, so the Flash Card I came with, I think it was it, alright, or something like that, but
it's the Flash Card itself is worth 25 bucks, so yeah, I would give this definitely a
definite buy, unless you have some other device that does this, but it's pretty good, and it,
now it could, the only way that I, and like I said, if I was going to do this, if I were
going to actually get in this, I think I would get a custom built one, or one that
can handle, I'd probably pick a Raspberry Pi 3, but some kind of a Raspberry Pi, just so you can
be reasonably sure you can upgrade in the future, but a more full single board
computer that can do more emulations, and maybe run Linux native, and for me that
would be bigger, but like I said for me, I was fine with the Game Gear, that's a
lot of on-game gear, long time ago, back when it came out, it's one of the few things I
paid full price for, and to me that form factor was fine, so that just gives you an idea
that today I would think that's too big, but not that much too big, like I said, the
DSI XL is pretty big, and that's not too big for me, and you could go a little bit
bigger, and I'd still be fine, so yeah, I give this a pretty positive
review, and I think it's definitely worth the money, and like I said, especially if,
and it's pretty thin, too, it's like half a stand as the original Game Boy, I would
say, I'll have that big, it's a little bit shorter too, but yeah, I would say this
is, especially if you like that, the 80s, all the 80s and 90s console emulators
all the way up, NES, not SNAPs, except I didn't see it in a television
emulator for this yet, but I'm sure it could handle that just fine.
And like I said, I know people are doing the side ports, they're coming along,
and so far I didn't have any games that weren't supported,
the ROMs that I had, so, and I don't know how long it plays, I've played it a couple
hours, I didn't have any issues, I don't know how long the battery lasts,
it plugs in a normal USB cable, and I think that getting a new battery
for this shouldn't be much of a issue.
Replace in the battery is a little bit harder than it could be,
because you have to take the case off, and that's one, two, three, four, five,
six screws, but it seems like we could have designed it,
where you just slide a battery cover off, but they didn't.
And then, like I said, it just charges for a normal USB micro USB.
And the buttons seem pretty good, and the issue with that,
I mean, I don't know if it plays a thing in and day out,
but they seem to be, like, much on par with Game Boy buttons.
Oh, it's, I guess I should say that, but this is molded with plastic,
it's not 3D printed.
So this should be a nice little stocky stuffer, and all the young kids,
if this is too old for them, they would consider this,
these case not work plan, I don't know, I guess I'll find out,
I'll probably give this to somebody.
And I haven't had it long enough to know if, you know,
if you have issues with the micro USB, it's corrupted,
or not, you've got a key flash, you know,
you put the software back on, but it is micro USB,
so, you might have that problem, but so I don't know.
I haven't had it yet, so I'm only gonna play it maybe three or four years ago.
So, I'm not gonna shine in on it.
Well, that's really about all there is to save off this thing.
Oh, one thing I forgot, it hands a header.
Looks like one key, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten,
and I suppose these are, what did it come on, GIO pins,
but in the header sticks out so you can access it from the end.
It doesn't stick out, it's flushed with the case,
but I mean, it's external, so you can access it without going into the case.
In the Exocamus, you've had her pins that you can put on there.
I don't know if I'll be doing that, but I imagine there's a lot of use for several people.
I'm just using this as a gig device, and now I use the header.
And as far as fashion, I'm not a fashion kind of guy, but it looks like a gay boy to me.
It's clear plastic, what I think I might do,
I might take this back apart sometime, and spray paint it on the inside of it,
so that it's not totally clear.
I don't really like it clear, because some of the light kind of escapes out,
so that follows me a little bit, but it's not too bad.
All right, that's enough for this episode. I'll go ahead and get this.
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