GameBoy Emulator on ESP32 and eInk [video]

This is a hobby-project video demonstrating a Game Boy (Nintendo's original 1989 handheld game console) emulator running on an ESP32 — a low-cost, low-power Wi-Fi/Bluetooth microcontroller chip popular with makers and IoT developers — and displaying output on an eInk screen (the same reflective, paper-like display technology used in Amazon Kindles, which updates slowly and consumes power only when the image changes). The feat is technically notable because eInk screens have extremely slow refresh rates (hundreds of milliseconds or more), making them ill-suited for the real-time video output (60 frames per second) required by games; running a playable emulator on such hardware requires clever engineering to minimize visual latency and synchronize input with the display's sluggish updates. The project reflects the broader hobbyist culture of reverse-engineering retro hardware and pushing microcontrollers far beyond their intended use cases.