Pixter

(picture from
[amazon]
where you can
[order]
it for \$79.99)

The Pixter is like a personal digital assistant (PDA) for kids. But
instead of storing boring appointments and phone numbers, they get to
draw, do puzzles, and learn a little, too. The Pixter is about the size
of a small book, and has a pretty solid weight to it. It’s made out of
brightly colored and durable plastic. The main action of this toy is
drawing with an attached stylus. The Color Pixter offers much better
graphics then the black and white version, which comes in handy with
activities like Paint-by-Numbers and Connect-the-Dots. You can draw a
picture free form, or you can use one of the starter backgrounds. There
are tool buttons, like on a PDA, that give you access to fun stamps,
special effects, and the eraser button. You can also save your creation
in the Pixter’s memory. There are some boppy tunes playing along with
all this creative activity, but luckily for parents, there’s also a jack
for headphones and a volume adjuster. The Pixter Expansion
Slot on top of the
Pixter accepts ROM-based expansion cards that contain additional
software and games. Requires 4 ‘AA’ batteries. (Not included.)

The LH75411 controller was developed to be a
perfect fit to the Pixter’s hardware and memory needs. Based on a 70-MHz
ARM7TDMI core, the chip includes color LCD
controller circuitry; a 10-bit, eight-channel A/D converter, an integral
touchscreen controller; and the usual assortment of counter/timers,
programmed I/O pins and SRAM. Pivotal to the design were the the 32
kbytes of SRAM, which make it possible to execute the Pixter’s
algorithms locally, and outputs that can be configured to implement a
12-bit pulse-width-modulated audio output. The addition of an
inexpensive external capacitor gave the Pixter the functionality of a
moderate-quality audio D/A converter.

There are several projects in the works to make an external cartridge to
boot a small Embedded OS. conversaion on
hacking the Pixter can be found on irc.freenode.net #pixterdev and
#eLinux

Category:

Pixter