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Playground Flashing

A project log for Dodo: 6502 Game System

Handheld Game System featuring the 6502

peter-noyesPeter Noyes 10/01/2016 at 04:000 Comments

Last update introduced the Playground, where games can be written in simulated all from within the web browser. Now, users of Chrome will be able to flash games right from within the browser, with the help of a Chrome App. Chrome Apps have the capability of interfacing directly with hardware, such as USB, Serial, and Bluetooth. Additionally, web pages can send and receive messages with Chrome Apps if they are white-listed by the App. With those two pieces web flashing is possible!

When the playground website loads, it checks for the existence of the App and if found it reveals a flash button. The website queries the App for a list of COM ports, and then when flashing commences, it sends the App the compiled game binary that was built in the cloud and then the App sends the bytes over Serial to the real Dodo hardware. As the bytes are transmitted, progress messages are sent back so that a progress bar can be updated. Check out the video to see how it all works.

Additionally, this means that a Chromebook can be used as a complete development environment for Dodo. The only feature missing from the Playground at this point is a way to more easily save games as they are being developed. Right now, a user would have to save a unique hyperlink every time they want to 'save' to get back to where they were. The problem is that for persistent storage I probably need to introduce the concept of a logged in user as an option to the playground. Perhaps I will use Github for single sign on using OAuth2.

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