Here’s a little proof of concept video for something I’ve been working on today: the ability to give the Arduboy a Serial interface, potentially unlocking multiplayer (link-cable-esque or wifi), sensors like accelerometers or alternative input devices, etc.
There’s not much here yet, just a chip bought from hobbytronics, but I’m hoping to find some time to make it into a little accessory board.
If you could make something like this, then that would be an inspiration to other people on the site.
Nice! 
The hobbytronics USB Host implementation is closed-source though, right?
If you made your own board, you would need to buy the pre-programmed PIC chips from them? or re-write / reverse-engineer your own implementation?
I’m confused.
What’s going on here that’s different to the Arduboy’s built in serial over USB?
I remember there being a reson that won’t work, but can’t remember the details.
I think it’s because a USB connection has to have one slave and one master and the Arduboy can’t be a master because the bootloader doesn’t support it.
Something like that anyway.
Yeah unfortunately - the chips from hobbytronics are quite expensive, but at least it’s easy 
maybe someone will find / have time to write an open source CDC driver, but until then I’d just use their chips.
The board plugged into the Arduboy here is a USB Host board - it acts as like a computer’s USB port and creates a serial interface with the arduboy. That serial interface could then be plugged into either a microcontroller with wifi/sensors/etc or into a second USB host chip connecting to a second Arduboy (creating a link cable).
I.e.: Arduboy <-> USB Host Board <-> Serial <-> USB Host Board <-> Arduboy
So the Arduboy’s USB is connected to the USB board, and the board’s jumpers are connected to something else?
Pretty much - for an actual link cable you’d just have a board with two usb ports, one for each arduboy. In between there are two of these microcontrollers that translate the USB into plain old serial and back into USB.
Not the bootloader. It’s the actual USB controller hardware in the ATmega32u4 that can’t be a host, only a slave. And, you can’t connect two slaves together.
Thank you, that makes sense.
The circuit is effectively supplanting what would have been a computer in some of the earlier designs.
(I’ll have to remember to dig that thread out when I get chance.)
Sorry for the delayed response, I wasn’t notified of your reply for some reason.
That’s it, I knew it was something along those lines.
Seems like it’s been a long time since the whole ‘serial multiplayer’ topic was brought up.
Another good reason to create Arduboy clones…
is to play multi-player games(if possible)
HEY! Since Arduboy clones WILL have extra pins then someone can simply link two of those together with some “spaghetti”. It might even be possible to daisy-chain them to something like…4 device so you can play some other interesting games.
Or if you willing to crack the back open I thought the Arduboy itself will be good…
You can create multiplayer games, but you need a Host (server) to connect multiple Arduboy.
