ESP32-SBC-FabGL Space Invaders out of the box - maybe worth mentioning to distributors

[Andy2No]

Short version: I suggest making it better known that the ESP32-SBC-FabGL comes with Space Invaders installed and that it can be played with just a VGA monitor and a PS/2 keyboard. Probably the best way to do that would be to get the shops to add the information to their product pages.

I recently bought an ESP32-SBC-FabGL with no clear idea what I could do with it, other than from watching a couple of YouTube videos about PC emulators, which is interesting but not really something I'm all that keen on doing. I wasn't sure how to even test it so I was pleased to hear it played sounds of some sort when I powered it up.

So, it has Space Invaders installed, as shipped. I found a blog about a Wii Nunchuck (?) being added to it but nothing to tell me if there was another way to try it. I found the source code here on github, in Examples/VGA, and read it enough to see that it can use a PS/2 keyboard.

I'm not sure if this was meant to be a surprise, but it has taken a bit of light detective work, to get to this point. Maybe it would have been better to give the shops that sell them this information, so it could have been put on the product page. I bought mine from ThePitHut.com. I'm sure they'd be happy to do that. Unfortunately their system for leaving reviews is a mess, or I'd add one to that effect.

The source code is here:

https://github.com/fdivitto/FabGL/tree/master/examples/VGA/SpaceInvaders

It appears to need the FabGL library installed in Arduino first. So far I've got:

ResolveLibrary(fabgl.h)SpaceInvaders:27:10: fatal error: fabgl.h: No such file or directory

[Andy2No]

I was under the impression this was the best place to post that, at the time, but I've since found Olimex's own forum.

To compile it, and other examples, I needed v2.0.11 of Espressif ESP32 boards support for Arduino (not the current one, which is v3.0.2). The board type (Tools->Board) should be set to:
ESP32 Dev Module

Olimex has their own fork of FabGL, specifically for the ESP32_SBC_FabGL;
https://github.com/OLIMEX/FabGL

See also;
https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP32-SBC-FabGL

I've posted this information in a couple of places because it took me some effort to track it down. It's now been added to the Olimex ESP32_SBC_FabGL manual, and the readme of the OLIMEX/FabGL repo, but it's still easy to miss these things. Hopefully this will save someone else some time.