Some MiSTer users put a small secondary “marquee” display on the FPGA board that can show information about the system such as the currently loaded core and what game it happened to be. Generally these take the form of a small monochrome OLED display, probably the one most of us have sitting in a parts bin somewhere.
May [Erico Mendonca] wanted something with a little more style, so he came up with a firmware for the ESP32-C3 that connects to MiSTer’s existing secondary display protocol, but with slightly more visually impressive panels than the round GC9A01 that so many hackers have been playing with as of late. If the whole circular display thing isn’t your… thing, you can even run the firmware on the Cheap Yellow Display for a turn-key rectangular experience.
Because of [Erico] didn’t want to fiddle with anything on the MiSTer side of the equation, its firmware has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the art that shows up on the display. So there is a web based editor that allows you to put together your own artwork to display on the marquee based on what command the MiSTer actually sent. Flashing the firmware on the ESP32 can also be done through the browser, as is becoming more and more common these days, making it relatively easy to open this project.
With this project it is also possible to control multiple client displays via WiFi from one system, just in case you want to show which console you are booting to in different locations.
We’re fans of the round display here at Hackaday, so it was great to see more people using it as of late.