A ZX Spectrum in the Palm of Your Hand

As any connoisseur of retro gaming will readily attest, there is no substitute for original hardware. Whatever the platform may be, there always seem to be some quirks that are not reproduced quite right by emulators. And aside from the technical imperfections, there is also something to be said for having the real deal in your hands.

But if you are going to run an emulator, you should at least do it with some style. That is the goal of the ESP32 Rainbow — a ZX Spectrum-compatible single-board computer that will be launching soon on Crowd Supply.

For the unhappy few that have not heard of it, the ZX Spectrum was a very popular 8-bit home computer that was first released in 1982. It may not have been an especially powerful computer, or even especially usable, but it was very inexpensive. This made it popular with many people and as a result a large community formed around it. That led to the development of quite a lot of games, and as they say, the rest is history.

As the name of the ESP32 Rainbow implies, the computer is powered by an ESP32 microcontroller — a powerful ESP32-S3 chip to be specific. But don’t get too bummed out that there is no Z80 to be found, because the ESP32 Rainbow comes loaded with an excellent ZX Spectrum emulator. Or you can build whatever ESP32-based projects you want on this beautifully designed board.

While the ESP32 Rainbow was meant to look reminiscent of the computer it emulates, it is not an exact copy. It comes equipped with a 320 x 280 16-bit color TFT display built-in, for example, so you can game on the go. It also has a slot for a microSD card to make loading new software easy, and a speaker, battery charging circuit, and even some available GPIO pins for expansion or hacking.

The 40-key keyboard mimics the look of the original ZX Spectrum, color, markings, and all. Given that the keys are capacitive touch sensors, the typing experience is probably just about as horrible as the membrane keys of the ZX Spectrum itself. But hey, you did want an authentic experience, right?

Anyone that wants to build their own projects on this very cool ZX Spectrum-esque single-board computer will be happy to know that the entire device is open source. Hardware schematics and the firmware have been made available on GitHub under a permissive GNU General Public License.

There is no word yet on when this project will officially launch or what it will cost. But if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on an ESP32 Rainbow, you can head over to Crowd Supply to sign up for notifications.