Going to EuroPython This Year? Get This Awesome PewPew Handheld Console

Everyone knows that the best part of attending conferences is the swag you get. Sure, most of the time it’s just stickers or the occasional water bottle, but free stuff is still free stuff! Fortunately, a lot of electronics-focused conferences have started giving out some next-level swag. At this past year’s Hackaday Supercon, for example, attendees all got a sweet handheld BASIC computer. For this year’s EuroPython conference, anyone with a ticket is going to get this awesome PewPew handheld game console.

As the name suggests, the EuroPython conference is a European event for Python programming enthusiasts. It will be full of talks and workshops designed to take your Python skills to the next level. This year you’re going to have a fun way to do that with the PewPew handheld game console designed by Radomir Dopieralski. Anyone who attends the conference with a training or regular ticket will receive their very own PewPew console, and there will be free workshops on how to program games on it in CircuitPython, which is a variant of MicroPython developed by Adafruit.

The PewPew console, which you can also wear as a badge, runs on a Microchip SAM D21 microcontroller. The display is a simple 8x8 matrix of red LEDs. Games are played with a total of six buttons: two action buttons, and four directional buttons. It’s built on a custom orange PCB, and is powered by two AAA batteries. For now, there is only a simple bouncing ball tutorial available online. But the fun, of course, is in programming your own games. If you want to get a head start, there is a “Pewmulator” available online so you can start experimenting with your code.